Good day. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the PrairieSky Royalty Ltd. announces their fourth quarter 2022 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Andrew Phillips, President and CEO. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Latonia, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for dialing into the PrairieSky Royalty Q4 and year-end 2022 conference call. On the call from PrairieSky are Cam Proctor, COO, Pam Kazeil, CFO, and myself, Andrew Phillips. There's certain forward-looking information in my commentary today, so I'd ask investors to review the forward-looking statements qualifier in our press release and MD&A. I'll provide an operational update and then hand the call to Pam to walk through the financial results. 2022 was strong across the entire Western Canadian sedimentary basin. PrairieSky saw 850 wells spud on its royalty lands throughout the year. This allowed our company to achieve double-digit organic growth over the year, well ahead of any Canadian or U.S. peer. The benefit of undeveloped land is clear in a strong capital cycle.
Our major investments since the IPO, all in downturns, include Canadian Natural Resources fee mineral title in 2015, Suncor royalty lands from Heritage in 2021, and our large Clearwater land base beginning in 2016. The fee mineral title lands acquired represent Canada's largest land position in the heavy oil fairway, a land position that is irreplicable. These were acquired prior to the multilateral drilling techniques being exported from the Clearwater to other areas of the basin in a meaningful way. Our company's WCS exposure is now significant and represents 50% of current oil volumes and is our fastest-growing commodity. This is in advance of the Trans Mountain line fill in the back half of 2023 or early 2024.
This new export pipeline to the West Coast to access Asian markets represents 590,000 barrels of new capacity. Structurally lower WCS differentials should result over the medium to long term. In the fourth quarter, we entered into 64 new leases with 53 different producers, which contributed to a record year in 2022 as far as the number of leasing transactions and a record number of counterparties, many of whom are newly capitalized teams with new play ideas exclusively on PrairieSky lands. Strong leasing momentum continues into 2023. Currently in the basin, 250 rigs are active versus 225 one year ago. Numerous new startup companies have been recently capitalized, leading to incremental activity in the basin. Clearwater production exited the year at approximately 1,600 barrels per day.
Significant new discoveries and step outs made last winter in the play will see first development activity in 2022, which should lead to new growth in the play. In addition, secondary recovery in the more mature areas of Nipisi and Martin Hills are showing promising early response. PrairieSky is in a unique position in this play, as the majority of our 1.3 million acres in the play are undeveloped. This will provide a decade or more of organic growth for our shareholders without incremental capital. PrairieSky continues to receive some of the strongest ESG ratings in all sectors of the North American economy, including top 1% as ranked by Sustainalytics. PrairieSky will have its biannual Investor Day in Toronto on May 17th at 9:00 A.M. at the Royal York Hotel.
Concurrent with the presentation from management, we'll publish our 2023 asset handbook, detailing the book value of the current development locations that exist on PrairieSky lands, directly offsetting known production. The focus of this Investor Day will be the Clearwater and the differentiation that PrairieSky has with its significant undeveloped land inventory. We will also provide a range of outcomes for the business over the medium to longer term. We hope our investors are available to attend either virtually or in person. I will now pass the call over to Pam to discuss the financial results.
Thank you, Andrew. Good morning, everyone. As Andrew mentioned, there is certain forward-looking information in the notes today, so I would remind investors to review the forward-looking statements qualifier in our press release and MD&A for Q4 and the year ended December 31st, 2022. PrairieSky had a very strong Q4, which closed out an exceptional year where we generated record annual oil royalty production, record annual royalty revenue, and record annual funds from operations. Q4 2022 funds from operations totaled CAD 119.5 million, or CAD 0.50 per share, bringing annual funds from operations to CAD 507.6 million, or CAD 2.12 per share diluted. Strong funds from operations were a result of increased royalty production volumes from organic growth as well as acquisition volumes from 2021.
Annual production averaged 25,914 BOE/day in Q4, generated royalty production revenue of CAD 144.8 million. Annual production averaged 25,206 BOE/day, combined with strong commodity pricing to generate annual royalty production revenue of CAD 615.7 million. PrairieSky's oil royalty production grew to 12,166 barrels per day, a 22% increase over Q4 2021, excluding acquisition volumes, and 7% over Q3 2022. Annual oil royalty production totaled 11,739 barrels/day, 56% above 2021 and representing 22% organic growth. Growth in volumes and strong benchmark pricing combined to generate oil royalty revenue of CAD 98.9 million for the quarter.
We were very encouraged by the organic growth from third-party drilling already seen in our oil royalty volumes and by the continued leasing of our lands. At current commodity pricing, we anticipate another active year of third-party drilling across our royalty properties in 2023. Natural gas royalty volumes averaged 66.4 million a day, 11% over Q4 2021 and in line with Q3. Higher royalty production volumes and strong benchmark pricing generated natural gas royalty revenue of CAD 32.4 million, 46% ahead of Q4 2021 and 34% over Q3 2022. Natural gas royalty volumes averaged 64.7 million a day for the year, 9% ahead of 2021. Natural gas royalty revenue totaled CAD 116.3 million for the year, an 81% increase over 2021.
NGL royalty volumes averaged 2,681 barrels per day in line with Q3 2022 and up 32% over Q4 when volumes were negatively impacted by ethane curtailments. Due to strong benchmark pricing, PrairieSky generated NGL royalty revenue of CAD 13.5 million, an increase of 5% over Q3 and 26% over Q4 2021. NGL royalty production volumes averaged 2,684 barrels per day for the year, 10% above 2021, and generated CAD 58.6 million of NGL royalty revenue. There were 248 wells spud in our lands in Q4, which were 85% oil. This is up from Q4 2021 when 194 wells were spud.
The Mannville was the most active play with 48 heavy and light oil wells spud, followed by the Viking with 46 wells spud and the Clearwater with 43 wells. An additional 73 wells were spud across the basin in the Mississippian, Cardium, Viking, and a number of other oil plays. There were also 38 natural gas wells spud in the quarter, including 20 shallow gas wells, seven Montney wells, and four Mannville wells. An active Q4 brought total spuds for the year to 850 wells as compared to 548 wells in 2021. PrairieSky estimates that CAD 1.5 billion of gross capital and CAD 84 million of net capital was spent on PrairieSky's royalty lands in 2022. Net capital increased 127% year-over-year, which led to PrairieSky's strong production growth.
Looking forward, PrairieSky's 2023 annual pricing sensitivities, which are all net of taxes, are as follows. A $5 per barrel change in U.S. dollar WTI would increase or decrease funds from operations approximately CAD 21.5 million. A $0.25 per Mcf change in AECO would increase or decrease funds from operations approximately CAD 4.5 million. A $0.01 change in the U.S. to Canadian dollar FX rate would increase or decrease funds from operations approximately CAD 4.5 million. Other revenue totaled CAD 5.8 million in the quarter and included CAD 2.1 million in lease rentals, CAD 700,000 of other income, and CAD 3 million of bonus consideration for entering into 64 new leases with 53 different counterparties. This brings annual other revenues to CAD 27.6 million.
In 2022, we entered a record 228 new leasing arrangements with 119 different counterparties, up from 139 leases with 85 different counterparties in 2021. This is an increase of 34 new counterparties year-over-year. New leasing is typically a precursor to increased field activity and is another reason we anticipate drilling on our lands to remain strong in 2023. PrairieSky is forecasting other revenue in the range of CAD 25 million-CAD 30 million in 2023, including lease rentals, bonus consideration, and other revenue. Compliance recoveries will be incremental to this amount and included in royalty revenue. Cash administrative expenses totaled CAD 5.1 million or CAD 2.14 per BOE in the quarter. This brings annual cash administrative expense to CAD 25.5 million or CAD 2.77 per BOE.
We expect 2023 cash administrative expense to be around CAD 30 million due to strong stock performance positively impacting share-based compensation. Current income tax expense totaled CAD 20.2 million in Q4. This brings 2022 current tax to CAD 85.6 million. Entering into 2023, PrairieSky has CAD 1.55 billion of tax pools to offset future taxable income, mostly deductible at 10% per year. For 2023, that means the first CAD 155 million of pre-tax cash flow is tax free, with incremental cash flow taxed at 23.5%. During the quarter, PrairieSky's funds from operations totaled CAD 119.5 million. We declared dividends of CAD 57.3 million or CAD 0.24 per share, with a resulting payout ratio of 48%.
Annually, PrairieSky generated CAD 507.6 million in funds for operations, which were used to pay dividends of CAD 143.3 million, with remaining cash flow primarily used to re-reduce PrairieSky's bank debt. PrairieSky's net debt at December 31st, 2022 totaled CAD 315.1 million, a decrease of 50% from December 31st, 2021, when net debt totaled CAD 635 million. In 2023, PrairieSky will receive the full pricing reduction related to our sustainable credit facility as we further improved our Sustainalytics ESG rating and are now ranked number 51 in Sustainalytics global universe of over 15,000 companies. Since IPO, PrairieSky has generated approximately CAD 2.2 billion in funds from operations and returned CAD 1.6 billion to shareholders through dividends and buybacks.
We will now turn it over to the moderator to proceed with Q&A.
As a reminder to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. One moment for our first question. Our first question comes from the line of Jeremy McCrea from Raymond James.
Yeah, hi guys. You know, this conference call, I can't remember the last time you guys were talking about how many lease agreements that are going on your lines here. Can you walk through what these new lease agreements look like this time versus maybe how they differed from a couple of years ago? You know, are there more well licenses with the agreements, more commitments, higher royalty rates, the type of plays that these new lease agreements are chasing? Just my second question here, would you mind just reminding us, you know, what are the two fastest growing plays on your lines and just kind of your expectations of where those may go here?
Yeah, for sure, Jeremy, thanks for the question. You know the leasing arrangements, it was an interesting year last year because we were leasing everywhere from Manitoba all the way to northwestern Alberta. It's extremely active across the entire basin for all commodity types throughout 2022. I guess there was a certain focus on the kind of new multilateral opportunities within the Mannville stack in the heavy oil regions. That's where we saw a number of new discoveries in a number of different zones, including the Waseca, the Sparky, the upper and lower Cummings. Pretty interesting new developments there. In terms of the fastest-growing plays with WCS exposure, the Mannville stack is obviously one of them.
The Clearwater at 1,600 barrels a day, growing somewhere in the range of 50% this year again, is another very important one. Even the Viking last year actually grew, from 2,000 to start the year and ended at 2,400 barrels per day of net oil production. A 20% increase in that play where we have 9,000 drilling locations. We've got kind of a 20-year inventory of development locations. I think the focus there was, you know, WCS did have a bit of a blow in the back half of the year, but light oil ended up still trading over CAD 100. The paths were very quick in those plays. We did see some growth in the Viking.
Okay. Thanks, Andrew.
Thanks for the question, Jeremy.
Thank you. One moment for your next question. Your next question comes from the line of Aaron Bilkoski from TD Securities.
Thanks. Good morning. This is more of a nitpicky modeling question, but I don't know the answer, so I figured I'd ask. What portion of that CAD 1.5 billion of gross industry spending that landed on your royalty lands would have been gas, like specifically gas targeted versus oil targeted?
Yes, good question. 20% of the capital spend was actually on the gas side, Aaron, and it was actually the highest number we've seen in about five years. I think back in 2014, it was almost 50% was spent on natural gas lands, but 20% was a high number for us.
Thanks. Maybe a question for Pam. You talked about cash flow sensitivities, and maybe I missed it, but what would your cash flow sensitivity be to Western Canadian Select?
Yeah. It's about CAD 2 million for a CAD 1 change.
Perfect.
Yeah.
Thanks.
Yeah, that's after tax, that's G&A. Then probably the bigger, like a narrowing of WCS, the bigger impact it has is on leasing and then of course growth in that part of the basin, because I think it has a pretty strong effect on producer economics. I think a narrowing of the differential should see the growth rates increase pretty substantially for us on those plays.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, Aaron.
Thank you. One moment for your next question. Your next question comes from the line of Matthew Weekes from ATB Capital Markets.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I think you just mentioned kind of the upcoming, you know, Investor Day, kind of highlighting and talking about medium sort of long-term opportunities in the land base. I'm just wondering if you could sort of touch on those, you know, at this time and what you do kind of see as future potential opportunities over the medium and long term. Thanks.
Yeah, thanks for the question, Matthew. One of the things we highlighted at Investor Day is we have our kind of proven reserves, which would be the 40 plus thousand wellboards just being blown down, not the CAD 2 billion value. We don't book any proven undeveloped locations, so the development locations directly offsetting those wells that are proven. What we do with the asset handbook is try and give investors a feel for what book value looks like in today's commodity environment, with today's technology, no new discoveries, no new technological advancements, et cetera. It's still well above our current share price. It's almost a highlight of the intrinsic value of the business or the book value of the business.
In addition to that, we'll provide some outcomes for investors over the next five, 10, and 15 years for the business in terms of potential returns in a variety of different capital spend and pricing environments. I think, you know, each Investor Day has a highlight and a kind of a focus play. I think the Clearwater will be the focus of the upcoming Investor Day. I would suggest that in two years time, when we have our next Investor Day, it'll probably be on secondary recovery and water floods, polymer floods, et cetera, because that's starting to become a big theme across a lot of our oil acreage on our more mature pools, is a lot of activity on that front to lengthen the duration of those assets.
Okay, thank you. Appreciate the comment. I'll turn it back. Thanks.
Thanks for your question.
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Adam Schwartz from Black Bear Value Partners.
Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I was wondering if you could comment on capital allocation going forward and your thoughts on buybacks versus dividends and in general, the balance sheet, how much of that you're comfortable holding, if any, and, you know, given where the stock's trading, things seem pretty cheap. Just curious how you think about overall balance sheet and what your plans are for the cash on a rolling forward basis. Thank you.
On capital allocation, thanks for the question, Adam. We've obviously got the dividend, which is about a CAD 229 million commitment. Cash flow is significantly higher. We, over the next year, wanna take debt levels down to very low levels. Ultimately, we want zero debt on the balance sheet. Buybacks will start to become part of the capital allocation sometime in the next couple of years. I think it's, you know, we're a business that trades well below intrinsic value because we get very little value for the 10 million acres of undeveloped land that currently doesn't generate cash flow. There's been a number of discoveries on those lands that have kind of proven some of the potential on those undeveloped acreage pieces.
I think the buyback definitely is an important part of the return over the long term for our business. I think we had a buyback in place for a long time, and we had net cash. We chipped away at it, did it very programmatically, and then during COVID, when things got dislocated, we bought back 10 million shares at CAD 9.30 a share. We always like to have available liquidity when things get challenging for both acquisitions or potential buybacks, which we do like an acquisition as well. Hopefully that answers your question. On the dividend, we expect ratable increases over the next decade, just kind of parallel to the growth in free cash flow per share.
Yeah, that answers. I mean, my only comment would just be, you know, perhaps contemplate some allocation between debt reduction and share buybacks, given you never know where the shares are gonna trade in the future, and they're certainly seem pretty cheap now. You guys have a very healthy, you know, high margin business. Maybe you could operate with a little bit of debt and just keep chipping away at it. Just my two cents.
Yeah, no, appreciate the comment. I know, you know, it's interesting, when we, when we bought Heritage, we closed that December 31st, 2021. We were borrowing at 2.1%. We rolled over the BAs last week at 6.31% at over 300% increase in cost of debt. It's definitely a good time to be retiring the debt. We have one of the lowest cost of borrowing in the entire business because of our 98% operating margin. It's definitely something we wanna get lower in the near term.
Perfect. You guys are doing a terrific job, so thank you.
Appreciate the comment.
Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Andrew Phillips, President and CEO, for closing remarks.
Just thank you very much to all our shareholders for their support over the year. We're gonna work very hard for you in 2023 to continue to lease land and grow the business. Thank you to all the staff who've been exceptionally busy over the last year and continue to be into this year. Have a great day and take care.
This concludes today's conference call. Thanks for participating. You may now disconnect.