Good morning. Welcome everyone to the Tamarack Valley Energy Ltd. conference call and webcast on December 7th, 2022 , discussing the recent press release. Today's call is being recorded. I would like to introduce today's speakers, Mr. Brian Schmidt, President and CEO, and Mr. Steve Buytels, Vice President, Finance and CFO. If you would like to ask a question, please press star then the number one on your telephone keypad to join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star two. Thank you. Mr. Schmidt, you may begin your conference.
Good morning. We're pleased to announce our 2023 capital and operating budget. 2023 will represent Tamarack's most active program, which focuses on high return Clearwater, Primary, and EOR development. The approved budget prioritizes the delivery of strong, sustainable, free funds flow while pursuing a culture focused on safety and focused on enhanced safety. For 2023, Tamarack plans to invest CAD 425 million-CAD 475 million, funded entirely through adjusted funds flow and equal to approximately 50%-60% of total 2023 adjusted funds flow at budget pricing. Tamarack has built-in flexibility with respect to capital allocations and will adjust accordingly to address volatility in commodity prices, including WCS differentials if needed. I will pass it over to Steve for a run-through on further details relating to the plan.
Thanks, Brian. Our 23 program is highlighted by disciplined investment across our portfolio of assets, which is optimized to focus on free funds flow generation, managing our corporate decline through continued investment in our enhanced recovery projects, and lower long-term costs through strategic infrastructure investment. We will direct approximately 55% of our capital program to primary development in the Clearwater and Charlie Lake, 20% to enhanced oil recovery waterflood projects in the Clearwater as well as our Sparky pools, approximately 10% to infrastructure initiatives in the Charlie Lake and Clearwater assets, 5% to exploration and delineation to expand our inventory, and finally, approximately 10% to ESG and corporate initiatives. At budget pricing, free funds flow will initially be directed to debt repayment and then enhanced return initiatives as debt thresholds are met. Pass it back to Brian for some more details.
Primary development expenditures of CAD 225 million-CAD 255 million for 2023 will be focused in the Clearwater and Charlie Lake plays, drilling 69 and 19 wells respectively. Building on the success of waterflood initiatives, the company will be directing CAD 95 million-CAD 100 million toward EOR projects in 2023, with the focus on the Clearwater assets. Every 1% reduction in corporate decline rate equates to about CAD 10 million-CAD 15 million reduction in annual sustaining capital. This adds to our debt-adjusted free cash flow per share. Given the scale of our recurrent operations and our growth through 2022, increasing our infrastructure ownership and operatorship is critical to delivering on our development plans. With this in mind, Tamarack is investing in key projects to drive long-term savings, enable optimal flexibility to manage corporate production, and enhance operating netbacks.
Our 2023 program includes two key infrastructure projects. First one, the Nipisi Clearwater Oil Pipeline Terminal Project. Tamarack has signed on as an anchor tenant in a new Nipisi Oil Terminal Project with third-party infrastructure partner. The project will provide pipeline transportation for 7,000 to 10,000 barrels a day of Tamarack-operated production from our major Nipisi battery directly to Edmonton. Projected transportation savings expected to drive annual savings of CAD 8 million-CAD 15 million and will require Tamarack to invest approximately CAD 20 million in 2023. The second is the Charlie Lake Processing Plant. Tamarack has completed phase with construction scheduled in early 2023. The project is estimated to be on stream by the end of the second quarter, standard cube feet per day.
In addition to delivering long-term operating expense reductions, this strategic investment secures required processing capacity to enable solution gas egress and to mitigate the risks associated with third-party downtime. Steve?
With respect to guidance for 2023, we expect that our CAD 425 million-CAD 475 million of capital investment will deliver annual average production of 68,000-72,000 BOE a day. With the integration of the Deltastream assets now complete, we are seeing a reduction in operating costs corporately on a per unit basis, which we expect to average between CAD 9.00-CAD 9.50 per BOE in 2023. With the low cost, low decline nature of our asset base, having transitioned into three of the top four of the most economic plays in North America, Tamarack continues to see a sustaining free funds flow break-even cost of approximately US $37 per barrel WTI, inclusive of our base dividend, which underpins the resilient nature of our business model.
The company remains committed to balancing long-term sustainable free funds flow growth while returning capital to shareholders. With the transformational acquisition of Deltastream, debt repayment remains the immediate focus to achieve our enhanced return of capital thresholds. Whereby we will return from 25% up to 75% of excess funds flow on a quarterly basis as our debt thresholds are met. I'll pass it back to Brian for some final comments.
Thanks, Steve. 2023 will be an exciting year for Tamarack, with plans to drill approximately 145 net wells and investments made to improve long-term sustainable debt-adjusted free cash flow per share. We offer a focused asset base with core holdings in place offering high economic returns and repeatable, predictable results. I'd like to thank our employees, shareholders, and stakeholders for all their support in the past year. Many of our employees worked long hours and gave up holidays to make things happen than we did in 2022. 2022 was a transformative year, and it would not have happened without the hard work of our employees. We look forward to continue to develop our high-quality assets to create shareholder value in a sustainable and responsible way. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, press star one to ask a question. We'll take our first question from the line of Patrick O'Rourke with ATB Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, guys, and thanks for taking my questions. I'm just curious with respect to the CAD 95 million-CAD 100 million in waterflood spending for 2023. What sort of volumes that considers that are today pre-injection basis? When can we expect an impact on the production profiles of those assets? I would assume six, nine months or even into 2024.
Good, Patrick. This is quite a unique waterflood in that what we're not doing here is going into an older reservoir and repressurizing it, bring it back up, and then waiting a couple of years for production impact. In that CAD 100 million, there's about half of it goes to drilling, producing wells that come on right away. We all call that all waterflood capital because we're going to be putting in injectors in at the same time. If you look in our corporate presentation, you'll find that we started injection after 120 days after the start of the primary wells, and we saw a response at about 190-200.
Now, I didn't put that aggressive of production build in the forecast, but that's a far cry from waterfloods that our listeners might be used to, where you're waiting, you know, a fairly long time for fill-up. You know, for a lot of engineers that kind of work waterfloods, you're better to go in right off the hop and put your injection right away, keep your pressure up, and that's what's delivering those superior results that we see in Nipisi right now.
You know, to your question on the production ads for this year with that, you know, when you look at it's like Brian says, half of it has the primary component with the way we set up the pattern. You're gonna see, you know, typical Nipisi and Martin Hills type of production with that. The other half, you'll see, you know, just given the timing, when we start those, you know, the real true just injection part of the floods probably is more like midyear. You'll see a little bit of production this year, but based on the timing of, you know, call it, give or take 6-ish months or so, the majority of that really comes next year to the tune of probably 2,000 barrels a day, Patrick.
you know, when you look at what Spur's done, in having the success in the Clearwater on waterfloods, Headwater's had some success, and then our Nipisi flood, which is a bit of a poster child for the line drive there. You know, that pilot is doing 500 barrels a day up from 300 barrels a day on that one well. We're pretty excited. Again, you can see the quantum of the adds. More importantly, like Brian highlighted, that 1% decline equates to CAD 10 million-CAD 15 million reduction in annual sustaining capital. you know, when we look and we put it in the press release, we think the 2023 investment, you know, forecasted on a risk basis is gonna, you know, reduce our decline by, you know, roughly a couple percent.
You know, you'll see annual savings of CAD 20 million-CAD 30 million in sustaining capital just on this 2023 investment. You can see how this sets up that longer- term balance and discipline in the plan around building free cash and sustaining that free cash, right?
I think you guys do a pretty good job, a very good job of conveying sort of the results on the 13 and 19 well in the presentation there. When we think about the quantum of spending here, CAD 95-CAD 100, and I know, you know, this is only a 2023 budget, and maybe this will be part of the five-year plan in January. How persistent through the years do you foresee the waterflood spending levels being as we go out into the future years?
We've been very cautious about putting waterflood into our five-year plan. Right now, really the only thing we have in the five-year plan is the capital commitments we did in 2022 and these specific projects that we're gonna do in 2023. Anything that expansion on the waterflood after that will be gravy to the debt-adjusted free cash flow per share that we're expected to improve on later.
Again, when you look at it, Brian's always talked about, you know, targeting 20% to 25% of your total capital investment into the waterflood corporately as we look at balancing the resiliency of the dollars we invest and balancing that PIR with payback. This falls right in line, Patrick.
you know, when you look at our sustaining capital, you know, throughout our five-year plan that we would have presented to you guys before, you know, we would see with the waterflood, which is part of that, you're probably in and around CAD 350 million-CAD 370 million annually, which would include your primary plus the waterflood plus ARO and, you know, the corporate pieces that you have to do to sustain your business and keep that production flat on a run rate basis over that eight years. Again, you know, this year is heavier with infrastructure and some of the other pieces we're doing, but true sustaining capital, inclusive of all this waterflood spend, would be in that sort of mid-CAD 300 million level for the company.
I really appreciate the color in the waterflood there. One other sort of very quick question in terms of the, you know, the overall capital budget level here. What sort of inflation is baked in there and assuming, you know, a lot of those, pressures are sort of on long-term contracts or medium-term contracts and protected for 2023?
Yeah, that's a really good question because, you know, industry is really struggling with how to kind of forecast where costs are going. We have seen kind of a leveling out on our cost here in Q4. There's a couple of areas where we're still a little bit concerned about. What we've done is we've built in about a 2%, 2%-3% growth over our Q4 estimates that we've got for next year. You know, we think that that's gonna be that represents kind of a bit of cooling off on the high inflation rates that we had. You know, who knows what's gonna happen with oil prices here too.
You know, we have talked to the board about escalation. If oil prices run, then that 2% might be a little light. If they stay where they are, we feel pretty good about where we're at.
Yeah. When you look at it from, you know, 2022 over 2021 average is probably. You know, I think if you look at the industry, you'll find the median in between 20% and 30% somewhere in there. I think we probably would be in that range too. You know, through Q4 here, like Brian said, you know, took that and ran that out. You know, on the operating side, you know, labor is a big piece, utilities is a big piece. On the operating side, we're maybe a little bit more than that, 5%-10%, just to take into account, you know, diesel, fuel, and some of the utility elements of the OpEx side of things.
Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one. We'll take our next question from the line of Dan Payne with National Bank Financial. Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah, thanks, guys. I'm just kinda curious, inclusive of the spend on waterflood in the Clearwater, what do you anticipate the aggregate growth in the Clearwater alone to be through the 2023 budget?
Yeah, no, it's a great question, Dan. If you look at where we are on exit, in through next year on what we'll be doing, you know, you're probably pushing around that 7%-10% range in the Clearwater, dependent. You know, you'll see that's really what's seeing the growth, given the really quick payback nature of those assets. On top of that, the high PIRs and, you know, the compounding effect of the cash flows you see on a multi-time basis there, in terms of multiple payouts on those wells. That's where the growth is. The Charlie Lake sees, you know, what I'd say, small amount to flat growth, just given the timing of our infrastructure coming on.
You know, on some of the plays that just aren't seeing capital investment, you see a little bit of the natural decline coming through to balance to, you know, the lower total corporate growth number of, you know, a couple of percent. The Clearwater is obviously getting the majority of the capital, but also you're seeing, you know, the biggest growth there. I think the big key there, though, Dan, as you know, and as Patrick just asked about, you really have to measure it on, you know, almost, you know, look at 2024 on the back of the waterflood spend there too, which would be another couple of 1,000 barrels on top of that.
You know, that's what would push that growth even higher if you look at it on a almost, you know, a July to July type timeframe with what you're really doing out of the winter program nature of the Clearwater, right?
Yeah. Similarly, I'm kinda curious, like, 7%-10% production growth, I've gotta imagine just with support of the waterflood and some of the infrastructure initiatives, et cetera, I mean, the free cash flow growth that comes out of the Clearwater probably is disproportionate to that 7%-10% number, correct?
Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You know, I don't have the figures in front of me here from last year, but it was just amazing that you know, we just looked at the Tamarack without Deltastream. It's just amazing you can fund a very significant growth program while at the same time taking a ton of free cash flow out. I've, you know, I've been in this business a long time. I've seen a lot of plays. I've never seen plays like this one where you can, where you can do that. Usually, you have to pause your free cash flow on an asset and then, you know, go put your growth in, then get your free cash flow to pay for it later. Not the case with this.
You're turning a lot of free cash flow over at the same time you're doing waterfloods, at the same time you're doing primary. Pretty impressive.
Yeah. And with that, I've got to imagine that that kind of pushes up those inflection points to free cash flow and return of capital and the enhanced dividend forward. Can you give us a sense for when you expect to hit those next inflection points, towards increasing the enhanced returns?
Yep. Dan, you know, when we put our prelim guidance out on the back of Deltastream there, we were guiding to the second half of next year. You know, with where the differential is right now at the current time, you know, that pushes that out a little bit, you know, into later part of next year. What I would say is, you know, when you look at that differential and all that's going on, we do, you know, see that as, you know, as well as a lot of the commodity shops see that coming back in. That would really be just the primary driver of right now what we see pushing that out a little bit. You're bang on.
I think we've built a budget that's, you know, risked accordingly, but has a lot of, you know, potential to bring that hopefully forward too, just given the way we would, you know, look at the risk production, curves and things like that, and the waterflood response timing and things like that in the Clearwater, right? You know, I think we do have some different levers there to, you know, make sure that that's a focus and that, you know, timeframe hopefully can be honored.
Yeah. Perfect. That's excellent. Thanks, guys.
This does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.