Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Suncor's 2026 Investor Day. My name is Adam Albeldawi. I'm the Senior Vice President of External Affairs and the Chief Human Resources Officer. On behalf of the executive leadership team, we thank you all for joining us here today. I hope that video gave you all a sense of the energy behind today's program. We have a great presentation and morning ahead of us. Now before we begin, I do need to start with a quick but important housekeeping note. Today's comments contain forward-looking information. Actual results may differ materially from the expected results due to a variety of risk factors and assumptions, which are outlined in our 2026 Investor Day materials and in our most recent annual report available on SEDAR+, EDGAR, and on our website, suncor.com.
We will also reference certain financial measures that are not prescribed by Canadian generally accepted accounting principles. For more information on these non-GAAP measures, please refer to our most recent annual report and quarterly report. With that, it is my pleasure to formally start today's presentation by introducing Suncor's President and Chief Executive Officer, Rich Kruger, to the stage.
Well, let me start by adding my good morning and welcome to those in the room, those online. I gotta go back to that video for a minute. You know, to my team who put that together, thank you. Extremely well done. If you felt any of the energy, the pride, and the determination that I did, you get a sense of what working at Suncor today is like. A highly skilled team, motivated, energized, committed to excellence, driven to compete and win. Our mission is not to be the best we can be, our mission is to be the best of the best, the undisputed industry leader respected for our people, our performance, and the value we add. Value to our customers, our communities, and our shareholders, which is what brings us here today.
Here's the agenda, as well as pictures of Suncor's executive leadership team who are here with me today. There's no other team I would rather work with in the industry. After a brief executive summary, we'll talk about today's Suncor. We'll describe not only what we've accomplished, but just as important, how we've accomplished it. We'll continue with the theme of we're not done yet, unveiling a new set of bold, ambitious commitments for the next three years. Troy Little, our CFO, will then take the stage and highlight shareholder returns, detailing our plan to reward you for your trust and commitment. I'll return and talk about a highly anticipated topic, our oil sands future, describing our plan to compete and win in the decades ahead. Lastly, we'll wrap up with our sales pitch. Why buy Suncor?
We believe we offer a unique and compelling value proposition to investors, one which will earn us a place on the podium in any and all business environments. With that, let's get started. A brief recap of the morning's main messages. Today's Suncor, rebuilt to win, new and improved, high performance, constructed with a comprehensive integration of leadership, strategy, structure, and culture. In terms of, we're not done yet, an additional CAD 2 billion of free funds flow growth by 2028 on top of the CAD 3.3 billion that we've delivered over the last two years. An additional $5 a barrel reduction in our overall enterprise breakeven, again, on top of the $10 a barrel recently delivered.
A further 100,000 barrels a day upstream production growth by 2028 from our existing asset base, following 114,000 barrels a day of growth over the last 2 years. The long-anticipated refining re-rate, re-rating our entire refining network by an increase of 10% based on the performance and the improvements we've made, again, with the existing asset base. I'll detail our 25-year 2P reserve life and an additional 95 years of contingent resources. We filed a regulatory report last night on this contingent resource, and I'll describe it further later, but it is developable with today's technology and know-how and expected future oil prices. We will share with you 400,000 barrels a day of undeveloped production capacity that we can develop at a capital cost of about CAD 30,000 per flowing barrel on average.
We will describe unique Suncor-specific competitive advantages that enable us to do this, specifically synergies with our existing asset footprint. Last but not least, we'll talk about increasing cash returns to shareholders through a capital allocation philosophy that prioritizes a reliable and growing dividend and substantial ratable share buybacks. With this recap, let me talk about today's Suncor. I've heard our story characterized as a turnaround, which a dictionary would define as a reversal of direction. What we've actually done would more accurately be described as a comprehensive transformation. The fact is we are no longer the same company we were three years ago. Today's Suncor is driven to excel, team-based, results-oriented, high performance. Pictured here is the blueprint behind our transformation. Each of the four dimensions shown are essential to the change and thoughtfully integrated to create the company we are today.
This blueprint was on the table literally from day one. Where did it come from? 40 years of experience leading global teams. It all starts with leadership, assembling the right management team, like-minded, deep functional expertise, bottom line results-oriented, individuals driven to compete and win. Total executives at Suncor today are down 22% from what they were 3 years ago. You do not need a top-heavy executive team when you have crystal clear priorities and you're acutely focused on what matters the most. Of the 45 executives at the company today, benchmark 45 against any other $100 billion market cap company. Of the 45 executives today, 60% of them are either new to the company or new to their current roles. It's a team I'll win with any day. Strategy. It's about clarity and focus.
Looking at what is it that we do or can do extraordinarily well to compete and win. In our particular case, I'll talk more about this uniquely integrated asset base. It's ensuring that you have an acute focus on the fundamentals. If you get the fundamentals right, most everything else tends to fall in place. It's establishing best-in-class performance ambitions in each of our businesses across the company. At Suncor, we do not believe in participation ribbons. Structure enables strategy. It's about creating a line of sight to value. We have delayered and consolidated work groups above the operating group into natural teams that produce products that drive our business forward. We've standardized management systems to work a common way and have a common language.
At each of our operational sites, we've configured them in the same consistent manner to accelerate lessons learned and best practices sharing. We've created a central organization that has a value-added mindset that supports the performance at each and every operating unit. Above the field, our non-operating personnel are down 2,300 people compared to three years ago today. 24%, they add more value than they've ever added. Culture, the last component of it. Some of you have heard me use this analogy. Culture is like Fight Club. What's the first rule of Fight Club? We don't talk about Fight Club. At Suncor, we don't talk about culture. We talk about what determines culture. What are those component parts that when they're assembled in an enterprise establishes the culture of an organization to deliver the team-based high performance we're after?
The value mindset, a clarify, simplify, focus mindset. We believe in paying for performance. Our compensation system today is entirely different than it was a few short years ago. You perform, we perform, you make money. You don't perform, we don't perform, you make less money. It's that simple. Those are the kind of individuals we want on our team driving toward excellence. As I said, this template or blueprint has been in place since day one, and we've rebuilt this company brick by brick with the vision, the goal of institutionalizing excellence. Critically looking at our past performance, it was clear we needed to reduce variation asset by asset. We had too much performance variation in everything, safety, reliability. We needed to reduce that variation and elevate overall performance as we did that. We tackled this with an urgent priority in a very comprehensive and systematic way.
Most notably, we developed an entirely new way of working in our field and in our plants, a new Operational Excellence Management System. Internally, we call it OEMS. It replaced a 15-year-old legacy system that we'd worked under during that, the entire time. Custom-made for Suncor, not a copy-and-paste, proprietary design based on industry best practices assembled. We rigorously developed this throughout 2023 and 2024, and then we urgently implemented it across the company in 2025. Consisting of its 21 standard work processes, such as working safely, managing maintenance, managing turnarounds, and so on, provides a consistent roadmap for specifically how each asset will achieve excellence. Its common construct across our enterprise enables fast learning and knowledge sharing across the company. Its effectiveness is further enhanced by the common site structural design that I mentioned earlier.
Our new OEMS is a game changer in institutionalizing operational excellence for the long term. That said, we didn't wait for OEMS to drive performance improvement, starting with safety. I've repeatedly said you cannot be a great company without being a safe company, and Suncor's safety history is well chronicled. That's all changed. For the past three years, we have achieved a step function improvement in both personnel and process safety, with personnel injuries and process safety events down 75% in three years, to the point that today we are one of the safest oil and gas companies in North America, a company employees can be proud to work for and investors proud to own. In a capital-intensive industry such as oil and gas, the utilization of existing assets is imperative to maximize return on capital.
This is also an area that Suncor historically fell short in, but not any longer. Since mid-2023, we have achieved a step function improvement in asset utilization across the company, setting and then breaking previous bests to reliability levels some didn't consider possible. Now we're at industry-leading levels, upstream and downstream. Incremental barrels are the most profitable barrels, delivering the highest operating leverage. We've embraced a mindset that every barrel matters. Trust and credibility in business and in life are based on delivering on commitments. A few short years ago, we were not earning your trust nor earning credibility, but that is no longer the case. Today's Suncor delivers on its commitments.
In the Upstream, having failed to achieve guidance for years, it was achieved in 2023 and in both 2024 and 2025, we not only achieved but exceeded the high end of guidance with record years, all accomplished with the same asset base. Downstream, correlated with reliability, we also exceeded the high end of guidance in 2024 and 2025. Although not shown, the same is true with product sales. Record high sales above the high end of guidance in both 2024 and 2025. Perhaps the best proof that today's Suncor delivers relates to our 2024 Investor Day. We established a series of bold, ambitious performance targets to be achieved over three years. Upstream production growth, enterprise break-even reduction, free funds flow growth, capital spend reduction, and achieving a net debt target.
As summarized here, we met or exceeded every single commitment in two years versus a plan of three. Every single commitment. Look at the numbers, they're big, including 114,000 barrels a day of upstream production growth, a 15% increase. Same asset base, no expensive acquisition, no major new capital projects, growth from within. A $10 a barrel reduction in enterprise break even from $53 a barrel to $43 a barrel, 20% lower in two years. Free funds flow growth of more than CAD 3.3 billion, a 65% increase in two years. Who does this? There's only one answer to that question, today's Suncor. This chart was developed by RBC Capital Markets a month ago. It puts our improvement in a broader context.
It displays break-even levels in US dollars for the majority of the world's oil and gas companies. The numbers are slightly different in that RBC includes total capital here versus our earlier break-evens that included sustaining capital. The story's the same. Suncor has lapped half the field in two years, moving from the best of the worst in the fourth quartile to now working to wrestle our way into the first quartile. We leapfrogged 21 companies out of the 48 shown in two years. The best part of this story, we're not done yet. One last chart before I discuss what's next, our playbook. If Suncor had an executive dining room, which we do not, this would be our place mat, excuse me.
Given I bring my lunch and eat it at my desk every day, this, a copy of this is front and center on my desk at all times. It displays the attributes that we believe are essential to compete and win in today's oil and gas world. Size and scale, upstream production, your downstream capacity, integration synergies, longevity and durability, your reserve life, your resource quality, reinvestment requirements, financial resilience, upstream supply cost, downstream profitability, enterprise break even, capital allocation, the strength of your balance sheet, investment discipline, and return of capital. Lastly, the ability to win. Operational expertise and excellence, differentiating competitive advantages, all leading to the ability to consistently, reliably, and ratably deliver superior returns. We use this as the lens through which we look at our business to plot our strategy and make decisions. Our belief is if we get these right, we will win.
Here it is, our new commitment. An additional $5 a barrel reduction in breakeven on top of the $10 recently delivered and an incremental CAD 2 billion per year in free funds flow growth by 2028. You can see the stairstep going from $43 to $38 and going from a normalized CAD 6.1 to CAD 8.1 over the three-year period. The next set of charts will depict where this incremental value will come from to turn it into a reality. Where are we working? Where will we capture this? First, our competitive advantage. What is it that makes Suncor unique and different? I'll give you a few minutes to study this diagram. We're gonna then pass out the quiz and, but in the meantime. Guys, you were supposed to laugh. That was funny. Geez, tough crowd this morning.
It displays what makes us different. It's our unparalleled physical integration far and beyond the typical upstream and downstream characteristics of an integrated company. It is this construct coupled with high performance that enables Suncor to always stand on the podium based on our unique ability to deliver value in all business environments. From the face of a mine or the bottom of a well, molecules move from left to right to upgraders to the market, supplying our own refining network with custom feedstocks, tailor-made for our processing units. Thereafter distributed domestically, internationally through a comprehensive, diverse network of logistics, ultimately reaching our customers, retail, wholesale, other, fueling planes, trains, and automobiles. We have scale in each of these aspects of our business as illustrated by the 2025 volume shown at the bottom of the chart.
We are effectively peerless as it relates to this unique construct of assets, an ensemble that cannot be easily or affordably replicated. Since our 2024 Investor Day, we have added value in each of these areas of our business and our forward plan is no different. I'll now walk you through the heavy hitters or where we envision capturing the most value in the years ahead. I'll start with upstream production. I mentioned the 114,000 barrels a day over the last two years from on the order of about 750-860. We envision over the next three years taking that 860-960. Shown here profiled by year with the ramp-up and then by segment. I'll talk about each of these segments here in a moment.
You can see its mining is about half of the anticipated growth, in situ about a third, and E&P the remaining share. Let me continue with in situ. Our plan is to increase in situ production by 30,000 barrels a day to greater than 300,000 barrels a day by 2028. We will accomplish this through continuing debottlenecking of the Firebag facilities, further optimization of our steam plants and our performance, additional infill drilling, sidetracks, drilling single producers between injector producer pairs, and increasing gas co-injection in lieu of steam. At these two points, the infill drilling and the additional gas co-injection, we've seen what others have done, benchmarked others, saw we've done less of this than others, and it is an opportunity for us to further improve. That is a characteristic of today's Suncor, extensive benchmarking.
We wanna know who's the best, what do they do, what do they do differently from us. We embrace that, shamelessly steal it, and immediately apply it in our operation. In both of these areas, we'll get material growth out of that. Utilizing solvent technology, I'll talk more about that in a minute. From an asset basis, Firebag, which produced under 200,000 barrels a day in 2022, is our most profitable asset. In 2025, it was 245,000 barrels a day without any major new capital project. We're gonna take the 245 to 275 by 2028. The remainder of the in situ is our MacKay River assets.
On each of the charts that I show here now, we'll have a box at the lower right, and that depicts the incremental free funds flow that's part of our CAD 2 billion that we anticipate from this activity. It comes in a variety of ways from cost reduction, capital reduction, margin improvement, so we've annotated how it comes from. The 30,000 barrels a day, we believe will lead to nearly CAD 400 million a year in incremental free funds flow by 2028. Continuing with mining growth. We plan to increase our mining production by 45,000 barrels a day of bitumen to greater than 700,000 barrels a day by 2028. You can see the distribution here. Fort Hills is more than half of the total. You've heard the story previously. We had a 3-year recovery plan at Fort Hills.
We executed that plan to the T. In 2025, Fort Hills averaged about 175,000 barrels a day. Over the next three years, we envision getting it to 200,000 barrels a day. This is enabled by two main factors, these Ferrari-like plants that Peter has built, twin plants, where originally the nameplate capacity of the two was 194,000 barrels a day. We've tested them individually and concluded that we have closer to 220,000 barrels a day of the two plants. Going from 175 with a 194 capacity to 200 with a 220 capacity. That's the plan at Fort Hills.
Additionally, going through now depleting the south mine in the center pit and going to the north, where we've opened up two pits, gives us the elbow room to optimize and drive our mining to then deliver the bitumen to these plants. Additionally, in all areas, blend management. Mother Nature deposits are not all created equal, but as we blend them, we can get more consistent feedstocks to our plant and higher performance to our plants. Precision mining techniques. These world-class PC9000 hydraulic shovels, the world's largest, of which we are the only ones who have them. We have three in operation, a fourth on the way, allows us to you know, selectively carve the type of ore we need at a point in time. In mining, little things make big differences, and we are focused on every little thing to make big differences.
We're also looking at our long-established pits in terms of our extraction capacities, the hardware, the extraction recovery, the processes around that, temperatures, solvent use, and we believe we can continue to extract more. That's the other 20,000 barrels a day on the mining growth, all resulting in nearly a half a billion dollars of additional free funds flow over the next three years in a $65 a barrel with a $65 barrel price deck. Should have mentioned that earlier. All these are based at a $65 barrel price deck. Mining improvement. The biggest component of our mining, the cost structure is the literal mining itself, the delivery of bitumen to a crusher before it goes into extraction and before it goes into any upgrading. That is the lion's share of the cost.
We have a very focused plan on improving that performance, and it starts with our mobile fleet, getting a 10% improvement in productive hours, reducing the hauling cycle time from receiving a load to dropping off a load and getting back. Peter reminds me the phrase in mining, "Roads make loads." Our plan is to not only improve the equipment reliability, performance-based contracting with our original equipment manufacturers, but enhancing our key mine roads. For example, using advanced geotextiles below our mines, so we're less immune to weather conditions, wet, cold, hot, dry. It's systematically looking at infrastructure and how do we make it better. Road management is a key aspect of it.
Optimizing our mine fleet with a fleet of 1,000 vessels, centrally controlling who goes where and when to minimize distances, to be ready to receive loads as shovels are ready so that there's no downtime in that system, getting more scientific about it. Operator scorecards on how our employees are measured and judged on their effectiveness, whether you're a shovel operator or a truck driver. Little things make big differences. AHS deployment. Over the last year and a half, we've talked about how we deployed autonomous haul at the base mine, ultimately to the point where at the end of last year, we were fully autonomous on all ore movements. Next month, we start our autonomous journey at Syncrude with the first autonomous vehicles on not the Komatsu, but the Caterpillar trucks.
We will propel that forward, and then we'll move on to Fort Hills over time. All of these are continued opportunities to achieve best-in-class mining performance. Last but not least, one I'm quite excited about, we refer to it as mud mode operations. Using AI and algorithms to how do we get the best performance on haul trucks, particularly autonomous haul trucks, in all weather conditions. As I've said before on Ernie's calls, you know, when it rains, we put on a raincoat, and it's cold, we put on mittens. We deal with all of that. How do we get the most out of our massive vehicle fleet independent of what the external environment imposes on us? We see more than a few hundred million CAD of additional improvement here in the short term. Even better turnarounds.
We've talked about turnarounds repeatedly now for several years in our performance progress, all informed by external benchmarking, the holy grail of turnaround benchmarking, Solomon. We are driving toward first quartile performance. In 2024, we outlined a CAD 250 million improvement plan to take our turnaround spend from about CAD 1.25 billion a year to about CAD 1 billion a year. Last year, I flagged and said, "We're gonna do better than that," and I added another CAD 100 million to that CAD 250 million improvement target. Today, I'm adding another CAD 50 million to that. We believe we will achieve a CAD 400 million improvement in our turnarounds from that CAD 1.25 billion starting point.
2024 and 2025 were the first years we were ever under CAD 1 billion a year in turnarounds. That's the new norm now. Our outlook for the next 4-5 years, we do not have any year that approaches CAD 1 billion in turnaround spend. How? OEMS-managed process, the risk-based work selection, improving our job planning, our readiness reviews, literally locking scope 6 and 12 months before we go into work, so you can do the rigorous planning, securing resources, whether that be, you know, equipment or materials or personnel, so when we hit the deck, we can get the work done as fast and efficient as possible. The next another tranche of improvement is not only improving the performance of individual turnarounds, but extending the intervals between them. Again, risk-based work selection.
This is an area, one of these gifts that keeps on giving. The more we dig into it, the more improvement we continue to find. We've made a lot of progress over the last few years. We believe we're somewhere near that second quartile now, but as I said, our goal is to be the best of the best. Our plans would drive us into the first quartile and improve free funds flow over the next three years by the tune of about CAD 200 million a year. Maintenance is the new turnarounds. We are envisioning a step change in our maintenance cost. Maintenance is about as it is with turnarounds, the work selection, the timing of when do you do work, the right work at the right time, all based on risk and condition of your equipment.
What we have found, ironically, is that we were doing more work than was warranted. We were doing more maintenance than the equipment warranted. What you do is, ironically, when you do that, you are taking facilities down, you're bringing them up, you're creating transient conditions. You're introducing more risk when you do that than running them at steady state. We brought a very, very comprehensive risk-based assessment process led by our central teams, so our sites don't bring any personal bias they may or may not have to look at that, and we believe we have CAD several hundred million of improvement opportunity ahead of us in the maintenance side.
Again, informed by Solomon benchmarking, directly tied to how we integrate, plan, and execute our work, having greater materials management efficiencies from a workforce management, having the right people with the right skill sets in the right numbers at the right time and technology and data-driven efficiencies. One example, drones. We flew over 4,000 drone flights in 2025. That is the most of any industrial in Canada by a long way. Well, what did we do with those? They helped us plan turnarounds early by instead of building scaffolds and putting people at the top of towers to look at the condition, we could accomplish that with drones. We took it a step further. Instead of confined space entry, which can be a very hazardous environment for individuals, we put drones inside vessels to inspect.
We can better understand the work we need to do. We have less surprises when we then get in the field, open things up, and we can better plan and execute our work. AI, our digital technologies, data-driven, tremendous opportunities in the maintenance front here, as I said, to add many hundreds of millions CAD to free funds flow in a relatively short time. Perhaps the worst-kept secret was our need to re-rate our refining capacity. When you're averaging over 100% utilization now for, I think it's literally two and a half years from mid-2023, the time was right. Well, it's official. We're rerating our refining network 10% higher from 466,000 barrels a day to 511,000.
Every single refinery is part of this rerate because the philosophy and the approach we've been applying to look at limiters, to find debottlenecks, to unlock capacity has been consistent across the board and has led to improvement across the board. What that, of course, will lead to is growing throughput. Low-cost debottlenecking, low or in many cases no cost, turnaround performance has been a part of it. What that does now, as we fill our crude units, we're able to further utilize secondary units to make whatever the residual products or flow streams are. Relentless focus on reliability and materially improving our response and recovery when we do stub our toe, which inevitably in an industrial enterprise happens. Our ability to get back on our feet and things become a blip versus a valley or a trench, that is part of our process.
In 2024 and 2025, our throughput was 465,000 barrels a day and 480. By 2028, our plan is more on the order of 500,000 barrels a day through our network. That would be about 98% or 96%-97% utilization. Of the 45,000 barrels a day we've captured about two-thirds of that, our next three years would be the remaining third, and that would be on the order of about CAD 150 million a year in additional margin improvement. In 2023, we fundamentally shifted our strategy from value over volume to value and volume. What we mean by that is we wanted, under Dave's leadership, we wanted to run our refining network at its capacities and put the pressure on our sales and marketing team to find profitable homes.
Whereas in the past, we were often informed by what we thought market demand would be, and then we would back into it and adjust our manufacturing capabilities accordingly. We turned that around 180 degrees, and what you've seen is the record high sales over the last several years now. We've also been climbing the food chain on value. What this chart shows, the width of each bar is the proportion of sales from retail, owned network, partner network, and so on, and the relative value. We've been expanding total sales and moving up, climbing the ladder, moving up the food chain on value. Most notably, I'll highlight retail. We've increased retail volumes 12% over the last 2 years. That is without question. Those are without question our highest valued sales.
On our controlled network, we've upgraded more than 100 sites over the last 2 years. Over the next 3 years, our plan includes an upgrading of about another 100. On our strategic partnership, Canadian Tire being perhaps the most notable, we've added more than 200 sites to our network that will carry our premium brand. Our loyalty program, so we get repeat business, repeat customers. Our branded wholesale, our Petro-Pass, our truck stops, growth there. Then the logistics optionality so that we can ensure we can reliably meet our customers' needs. Fuel is a cost to many of our customers, but it's not their core business. What's important if you're flying an airplane or running a locomotive is that you have what you need, when you need it, in the quantities you need.
Reliability, our customers are willing to pay when we can be increasingly reliable. Focused on volume and value, and we think there's, I would say conservatively, another CAD 100 million in value we can capture here over the next few years. This segment of our business is somewhat unique relative to the competition. We refer to it as differentiated value capture. The concept is maximizing the value of each and every barrel while driving down our costs. You can see our scope here shown on the map. We produce on the order of 100 crudes. That's up from 95 the last time we presented at an Investor Day. 265 products is also up. 45 countries we have the reach, the ability to market in. That is more than double what it was two years ago. More than double.
In today's volatile world, that has come in handy and created value. We have 1,400 customers, up more than 200 since the last time we showed you a comparable page. Growing our trading activities. We trade around our assets. Asset-backed, physical, not speculative trading. Optimizing our logistics utilization. When you're as big as we are and have the scale, we are in a strong position to negotiate tariff terms and minimize tolls or costs, whether they be truck, rail or marine. Expanding this export capacity that I've flagged here to reach markets when the opportunity, whether that's in South America, Europe, in Asia. We've grown this business. We believe we will continue to grow it to the tune of CAD 200 million more free funds flow in the next three years.
These last several pages are some of the bigger opportunities being pursued, but I'd be remiss if I didn't say this is not a comprehensive list. We have 15,500 employees aligned and focused on adding and creating value across our enterprise. As they do that, we, just like the delivery of this most recent three-year plan in two years, it's not that we accelerated everything. The impact of many of the things we did was greater than we anticipated, and our organization found incremental or new ways to add value. I anticipate that is going to continue to occur. At this point, I'm gonna turn it over to Troy, and he will talk about you know, what's in this for you from a financial implications.
Thanks, Rich. Let me start with revisiting our new commitment of a $5 per barrel reduction in our breakeven and a $2 billion increase in our annual free funds flow. It's important to remember that it was only 22 months ago that we launched a similarly ambitious plan. Bringing those two plans together, the net result is that Suncor will have reduced its corporate breakeven by $15 per barrel and increased its annual free funds flow by over $5 billion. The benefits of this improved resiliency and much higher cash generation flow directly to shareholders, and I'm going to talk about that more specifically now.
At our 2024 Investor Day, we outlined a 3-year plan to deliver over CAD 40 billion of AFFO at a $75 oil price. As we are outlining today, between 2026 and 2028, we expect to generate that same CAD 40 billion of cumulative AFFO, but at an oil price of only $65, a $10 lower basis. At $80 WTI, it would be over CAD 50 billion in AFFO. Over the next 3 years, that supports AFFO growth of 6% per year and AFFO per share growth of 11% per year. It's per share growth that matters, as we all know. It is a direct indicator of how we are building value for our shareholders over time.
This increased level of sustainable cash generation reflects the growing strength of our business and the durability of our integrated model, a model that is designed to generate strong returns over and across commodity cycles. This leads to more capacity to increase returns to shareholders, and supporting that returns capacity is continued capital discipline. Consistent with prior messaging, we expect capital expenditures to remain at or below CAD 6 billion per year. This is even as upstream production grows by an additional 100,000 barrels a day and our refining and sales and marketing businesses continue to produce and sell more volumes. Our confidence in delivering on our plans without increasing our spending is based on a laser focus on building upon the gains we have already achieved in reducing our sustaining capital requirements in both turnarounds and maintenance.
This same level of total spending, along with a shift from sustaining to economic capital, results in a higher profitability for every dollar we spend. Our economic capital portfolio also continues to shift in character. In 2024, CAD 2 billion of our economic capital was made up of just six projects. In 2026, that same CAD 2 billion is made up of 18 projects. This change in portfolio makeup results in a more flexible, more easily manageable set of projects that often bring faster payback periods. The broader point is simple. We are continuing the capital discipline we have demonstrated over the past several years, and we're only getting better. It is now embedded in how we operate and is a key part of how we drive stronger returns for shareholders.
That discipline on capital is a direct contributor to growth in free funds flow. The result of growing our cash flow and maintaining a disciplined capital spending program is a meaningful increase in our annual free funds flow over the next 3 years of CAD 2 billion at $65 WTI. This represents a compound growth rate of 10% versus 2025 on a normalized basis and 15% on a per share basis. Put another way, we will grow normalized free funds flow by 33% between 2025 and 2028, and a full 176% since 2023. That is cumulative free funds flow of CAD 22 billion over the next 3 years at $65 WTI, reaching over CAD 32 billion at $80 WTI.
Just as important, we are doing this from a position of balance sheet strength. Let me turn to that now. We are fully committed to maintaining a strong and resilient balance sheet through the cycle. Over the last three years, we have reduced net debt by CAD 3.5 billion or 36%. Compared to mid-2020, our net debt is down CAD 11 billion. This is not just about reducing a number. It's about maintaining balance sheet flexibility and quality over time. We are managing the balance sheet proactively across the curve with a healthy maturity profile and a disciplined approach to improving term, pricing, and market access over time. At December 31, 2025, net debt to AFFO was 0.5x, and our available liquidity was over CAD 9 billion.
As we think about the right long-term net debt level, it needs to reflect several factors, the company's underlying cash flows, the consistency in the performance of our assets, and the external environment. These factors will evolve, and a balance sheet must evolve with it. Our continued goal of maintaining a ratio of 1x net debt to AFFO at $50 per barrel incorporates these factors, and based on our plan, would equate to roughly CAD 10 billion of net debt. This capacity underscores the growing strength of our business. This strong credit position recently allowed us to refinance CAD 1 billion of debt at the lowest pricing in the Canadian energy sector in over 15 years. This prudent management of our balance sheet positions us comfortably to return excess cash to shareholders through the cycle, something I will turn to now.
Let me close with what this means for shareholders. We remain committed to a reliable and growing dividend. This commitment is supported by our plan to grow free funds flow and further lower our corporate breakeven. As we continue to buy back shares, we also create more room to grow dividend per share over time. Two years ago, we outlined a plan to return $18.5 billion to shareholders at a $75 WTI price. Today, we expect to return over $23 billion through dividends and buybacks at $65 WTI. At $80, that's $33 billion. That is more cash to shareholders at a lower price. Between 2023 and 2028, that would mean a reduction on our outstanding shares of over 25%. That grows to a full 33% at $80 WTI.
This is enabled by a resilient balance sheet, capital discipline, and a business model that is built to win across the cycle. We also want those returns to be reliable, predictable, and ratable. That is why we previously announced monthly buybacks of CAD 275 million starting last December, a 10% increase on the previous amount. Based on the confidence in the plan we are putting forward today, beginning tomorrow, April 1, we plan to increase that monthly buyback to CAD 350 million per month for the remainder of 2026. That is a 27% increase from just 3 months ago. Rich will now take you through a discussion about our long-term and the significant resource base that supports it.
I hope you will look at that as a sign of the repeatability of what your company has delivered and is about to deliver. I hope you, we have built a stronger business with stronger financial foundation and a plan that delivers even more value to shareholders in every environment. With that, I'll turn it back over to Rich.
Well done. Earlier, I listed resource longevity and durability as a key attribute to compete and win in today's oil and gas world. Candidly, when I joined the company, it was one of my biggest questions. I had read the reports questioning the company's long-term future, questioning if the growth potential existed. If so, at what cost? As an outsider at the time, I didn't know the answer, and I was wondering when I got there and opened the cupboard, what would I find or would it be bare? For some time now, we have comprehensively assessed our resource base, drilling, increasing delineation drilling on undeveloped deposits, shooting seismic to better define reservoir boundaries, obtaining cores and core analysis to assess reservoir quality and characteristics, completing screening studies on development economic scenarios, and lastly, by engaging third-party experts to validate our assessments.
The short answer is, when you open Suncor's cabinet doors, it's like walking into a Costco warehouse. We have a large abundance of high-quality opportunities. We not only have a 25-year 2P reserve life with 100% replacement over more than the last decade, but we also have 30 billion barrels, nearly 100 years of quality contingent resources to develop. Eleven billion more barrels than the last external assessment we shared more than a decade ago. Eleven billion more. Contingent resources developable with today's technology, techniques, and know-how. Demonstrated capabilities and capacities, nothing new required, and considered economic at expected future prices. We did this assessment before the last few months, so when I say expected future prices, I mean $65-$70 a barrel. We have 11 billion-barrel resource base that we think would make economic sense.
A wealth of opportunities with absolutely no exploration risk. The timing, pace, and scope entirely up to us. Without a doubt, this has been the most positive surprise since I joined the company. Now, let's look at this tremendous resource base in more detail. Instead of three years ago, this story starts 110 million years ago during the early Cretaceous stage. Mother Nature blessed Canada with the world's fourth-largest energy endowment, and giving Mother Nature was a conservative, she elected to put the majority of it in Alberta. Sand, silt, clay, marine organisms transported by giant river systems converged north of Fort McMurray, depositing shallower mining amenable resources to the west, deeper in situ resources to the east. Here's where Mother Nature faced a dilemma. Who to entrust with developing these resources? Mining.
Mining takes bold, pioneering spirit, strong, determined custodians, in situ, shrewd, creative, innovative. In recognizing the antitrust laws of the day, Mother Nature couldn't grant all the resources to one party. But after careful consideration, she granted Suncor a lion's share of the best of both resource types, in particular, the corridor between Firebag and the Base mine, where literally two giant river systems converged, depositing some of the thickest, highest quality bitumen resources. This is the story on how Suncor obtained its resource base. Now, I watched last week, just like the TV series Peaky Blinders, I may have taken a little bit of liberty with the characters, the timing, and the events, but fundamentally, the message is true. The unique size, quality, and concentration of our resource base. That provides us operational and development synergies that our competitors cannot replicate at scale.
Let's dig into the 22 billion barrels. It's safe to say at 22 billion barrels, this is among the largest, if not the largest undeveloped in situ resource base in industry. It's not only large, it's high quality. Quality is a function of many factors. You've got permeability, porosity, thickness, depth, SOR, cost. For simplicity here, I've used a third-party reference using average pay thickness as a proxy for quality. The key takeaway is with 9 billion barrels on each lease, Firebag and Lewis are among the biggest and best undeveloped resources in industry that again, Suncor enjoys specific synergies. I learned long ago when buying or building a new house, it's all about the quality and the location. Firebag and Lewis are both high quality and they're both in good neighborhoods.
Our opportunity is not only to build a house or two, it is literally to build a master planned community over time. This chart depicts how we will build this community. Standardization and replication, design one, build many. Standard development sizes and scopes, facilities, well pads, optimized and repeatable. Tremendous benefits, execution efficiencies, shorter durations, lower cost, operability, and so on. Quick story. Fifteen years ago, I have twin boys. They were about 9 or 10 years old, and I was buying them new nightstands for their bed, and I made the horrible mistake to go to IKEA, and I bought 4 of these nightstands. The first one, I was ready to throw them all out the second story window by the time I got it together.
By the time I put that fourth one together in the middle of the night, you'd have thought I was the company's Swedish founder. You get really good at it when you do the same thing over and over again. That is our plan, except not screwing up the first one. We wanna get it right and then just get better and better and better and better. In a past life, I have led global teams where I have successfully executed this exact same development strategy, from large-scale FPSOs off the west coast of Africa to satellite platforms in the South China Sea. The benefits and merits of it are real and tangible. It starts with having the right resources, large, long life, which are amenable to standardization and replication. This, we believe, is the winning formula in capital efficiency with flexibility to pace as warranted.
I've mentioned Suncor synergies. What are they? Surplus steam generated at the base plant that we can redirect for perhaps up to 80,000 barrels a day of SAGD production. Regional field infrastructure ranging from roads, utilities, pipelines, lodges, the aerodrome, and more. Internally produced solvent for ES -SAGD, avoiding costs in transportation, or purchase costs and transportation costs. Internally sourced diluent for shipping, avoiding the same cost. Integrating water management for both process use and disposal capacity. Increasing our feedstock optionalities at our upgraders to keep those moneymakers full at all time. The list could go on. It's important to re-emphasize that these synergies are enabled by two things, both unique to Suncor, our resource size and concentration and our existing asset footprint. It's the two of those together that enable this. They'll add material value, lowering both upfront capital, ongoing operating costs.
It's really the cornerstone of our value proposition and how we see envisioning, competing, and winning for the long term. Assets are like children. We always have a favorite, even though if we don't like to admit it. Well, I'm here on stage and admit it, Firebag is my favorite. This thing, it's the gift that keeps giving. It's our most profitable asset. It has material growth potential. Our plan here will be to scale a large, high quality asset with already industry-leading performance. We have a regulatory approval today within lease, a productive capacity of 368,000 barrels a day. We produce about 250 today. We literally filed yesterday an amendment to expand that capacity to 700,000 barrels a day in the large Firebag lease.
We will be leveraging existing infrastructure, all those things I mentioned, and we will be deploying ES-SAGD, our solvent technology. We picture developing this in phases, four of which are shown here, lookalikes in terms of 60,000 barrels a day. You see the estimated startup timings, capital intensity, sub $40,000 a flowing barrel. Each one of them comes online and then has a 30+ year life thereafter at very attractive operating costs in the $10-$12 a barrel range. Let me comment on the solvent technology quickly. We have been piloting solvent technology at Firebag on a well pad with eight pairs for four years, 2021 through 2025.
What we have observed and experienced is, we've been injecting about 10% solvent in the steam mix, a 30% production uplift, 20% SOR reduction, and an 80% or higher solvent recovery. That leads us to say this is commercially deployable technology. Our new well pads, all of our new pads at Firebag will be ES-SAGD. We funded and I've signed off and approved the first four of those late last year. We're also participating in a joint venture that's looking at a higher solvent concentration. If the learnings out of that will inform us to adjust our plan over time, we have that flexibility. One of the benefits also with the solvent, of course, is you use less steam, you have less emissions that go with it.
There are a number of benefits that go with a successful application of solvent technology. If Lewis were my favorite child, or excuse me, if Firebag were my favorite child, Lewis would be my, you know, future unborn favorite because here we will be able to use the proximity to the base plant where we will not need a central processing facility. We will be able to leverage those existing regional assets as shown on this diagram, cogen, steam, water, extraction. We have an existing regulatory approval at Lewis of 160,000 barrels a day now, leveraging those assets, sequencing Lewis development with when the base mine depletes because of the synergy in the assets. You can see we have 2 phases outlined there, 40,000 barrels a day each, at a less than CAD 30,000 per flowing barrel capital cost.
Again, long life, low operating cost. This chart displays the opportunities I've just discussed, each of those phases, and takes the Fort Hills and Firebag debottlenecks that I mentioned in the earlier section and puts them together ordered from left to right on capital efficiency measured by development cost per flowing barrel again, scaled across the X-axis by production capacity for each project or phase. We have 400,000 barrels a day of undeveloped capacity at an average cost of CAD 30,000 per flowing barrel. Also shown based on the size of the resource base is a representation of further growth potential. That will involve decisions around business environment, shareholder value at another time, but this in no way depletes our inventory. I described that earlier.
This has on the order of about 4.5 billion barrels developed with what's shown here out of this massive, much larger inventory. This chart builds on the prior and displays how we would intend to execute our strategy. On the left, project phases are delineated by relative maturity. Where are we today? Are we in detailed engineering work? Are we doing the development planning? Are we in the preliminary screening? You can see increasing maturity at the top, decreasing maturity down the page. Also shown are the initial capacities and the resources that would be developed consistent with earlier pages. The stages of project execution shorten over time, whether that's engineering design, project execution ramp up with the design one build many, the benefits of that approach. The circle in each case denotes first oil.
Sequencing is intended to maximize capital efficiency and allow us to apply lessons learned from project to project. In other words, we are not schedule driven in this. We are cost, quality, and value driven in how we would expect to execute this strategy. These charts depict the capital requirements and the production buildup associated with that development plan. Cumulative capital over the next decade is on the order of CAD 13 billion over a decade, peaking at about CAD 2 billion a year for a four-year period. Production would ramp up to 400,000 barrels a day of bitumen with the steepest ramp up occurring post 2032. Developed reserves, I commented, are on the order of about 4.5 billion barrels on this page at a very attractive cost per barrel. As I said, once online, productive lives exceeding 30 years in each instance.
Low decline rates, mitigation would be via sustaining well pads as needed over time. The repeatable modular design coupled with what we consider to be a manageable annual spend gives us high execution confidence. Confidence that we won't be biting off any more than we can chew at any point in time, and confidence that we can learn, apply, and improve as we proceed. These charts also depict capital and production, but now from an overall Suncor enterprise perspective. We intend to execute this in situ plan maintaining capital at or below CAD 6 billion a year, closer to CAD 6 billion during the peak execution period, tapering off thereafter, achieved via the completion of ongoing projects and reductions in sustaining capital described earlier.
Production near term will climb by 100,000 barrels a day over the next three years, consistent with earlier comments, flattening out thereafter for modest growth later in the period. Two things are worth highlighting on this graph. One is this longer-term optionality, given our resource base, if conditions warrant the future growth potential. Second, but perhaps the most important, is the relative proportion over time shifting from mining to in situ as the base mine depletes in the mid-2030s and in situ ramps up. Let me drill into these implications on the next chart. The title says it all. All barrels are not created equal. In situ delivers 2 x the relative cash flow per barrel compared to mining. Today, our production mix is roughly 70% mined barrels, 30% in situ.
By 2040, we expect to reverse that 60% in situ, 40% mining. The math is illustrated on the right graphic. I'll briefly explain. The dashed line at the top depicts the realized price for a barrel. Using 2025 as a reference, WCS was roughly $52-$53 a barrel US. Convert that to Canadian dollars, CAD 70-CAD 71 a barrel, roughly. Mining costs, all in, OpEx, royalties, sustaining capital, transportation, roughly CAD 50 a barrel Canadian, all in. 70 realization minus 50, you have a CAD 20 a barrel margin or netback. In situ, all in, OpEx, royalty, sustaining, transportation, about CAD 30 a barrel Canadian. 70 minus 30, 40 left on margin or netback. CAD 40 a barrel in situ, 20 for mining, a 2-to-1 ratio of cash flow per barrel after cost. Realize that's a lot of math.
Just stick with me a little bit longer. Our structural shift to in situ will provide a greater than 20% increase in relative cash flow per barrel from mix alone. The diagram depicts this, with each symbol representing 10% of our production mix today versus 10% of our production mix in the future. The ratio or the weighted average is shown to the right and illustrates the 20% uplift, an enduring structural change. Despite a long-term production outlook with relatively modest top line, compound annual growth rate, much greater value will be delivered, value literally as if we were to grow production at the current mix on the order of 20%, achieved while spending within our means. Again, what we believe a winning formula. This brings me to my wrap-up, humbly titled Why Buy Suncor? Executive summary. Showed you this before.
Main messages, this company has been rebuilt to win. We're not done yet. We've delivered materially over the last few years. We expect to continue to deliver in the short term. With a large, high-quality resource base, we're gonna be playing this game successfully for decades to come. Given your trust and confidence in us, we intend to reward you at each and all stages along the way. This slide just recaps, pulls from Troy's earlier comments and just looks at the shareholder value on a per share basis with AFFO on the left, free funds per share in the middle, and cash returns on the right. Now, I've taken a liberty. We've built this deck consistently around a $65-$80 price, so you can kind of hold us accountable for our performance. What I've done here is...
This is all referenced off of 25 actual. The zero line, the reference is 2025. We see the ability to more than double free funds flow per share and shareholder returns over the next 3 years at an $80 a barrel if we're in an $80 a barrel world. You can see if it's a $65 a barrel world, what it would be, and of course, if it's higher than that, it would be even more so. Last slide. Why buy Suncor? Industry-leading safety and operational integrity. A company you can be proud to work for, proud to own. Reliable, ratable, almost industrial-like financial and operating performance in most all business environments. Uniquely integrated with an unparalleled asset base that both reduces volatility and allows you to capture value as conditions change.
The large, long life resource base I've defined in terms of our 2P reserves and our contingent resources. With a cost structure now where we are financially resilient, increasingly among the best of the best in when you have extreme market condition swings, a shareholder-focused capital allocation philosophy, and I can assure you an executive team that is aligned and driven to compete and win. As I said earlier, we do not believe in participation ribbons. We wanna be at the top of the podium. That concludes our presentation. Thank you for your interest, your support, your trust, and your confidence. We do not take it for gra-