Good morning and welcome to Whitecap Resources' annual meeting of shareholders being held this morning by audio webcast on the Lumi Meeting platform. I will now turn the conference over to Whitecap's Chairman of the Board, Mr. Ken Stickland. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the annual meeting of shareholders of Whitecap Resources, Inc. The meeting will now come to order. I am Ken Stickland, and I am the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Whitecap. I will act as Chair of this meeting. Our meeting is being hosted on the Lumi Virtual Shareholder Meeting platform. This allows registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders to vote and to submit questions and comments to the moderator to be read and addressed at the meeting. If you have a question or comment, please submit it through the system. Following the formal portion of our meeting today, Grant Fagerheim, our President and Chief Executive Officer, will make some brief remarks. After his remarks, he will address any questions.
I shall ask Jeff Oke to act as Secretary of the Meeting, and Jackie Fisher and Nazeem Nathu, representatives of Odyssey Trust Company, to act as our scrutineers. I have received confirmation from Odyssey as to the due mailing of the meeting materials and the financial statements for the year ended December 31st, 2022. I direct that this confirmation, together with copies of these documents, be kept by the Secretary with the minutes of this meeting. Business may be transacted at this meeting if two or more persons are present holding or representing by proxy, not less than 25% of the shares entitled to vote at the meeting. We have received the scrutineer's report, and it shows that there is a quorum of shareholders present at the meeting. I direct that the scrutineer's report be kept by the Secretary with the minutes of this meeting.
I now declare that the meeting is regularly called and properly constituted for the transaction of business. We will conduct each vote by way of vote cast on the Lumi platform and those submitted by proxy. I understand that the scrutineers have tabulated all of the votes received prior to voting cutoff. If you have previously voted, you do not need to vote again when prompted. By voting again, you will revoke any previous vote made prior to voting cutoff. We will now open the voting for all of the resolutions. Particulars of the votes cast on all matters will be available on SEDAR after the meeting. I direct that the scrutineer's report on all matters be annexed to the minutes of this meeting as a schedule. I would first like to present the financial statements for the year ended December 31st, 2022.
These are located on the Lumi dashboard page. The next item of business is to fix the number of directors.
My name is Thanh Kang , and I move that the number of directors to be elected at this meeting be fixed at 10.
My name is Janice Wood, and I second the motion.
Is there any discussion or question submitted from any registered shareholder or proxy holder on that motion?
Mr. Chairman, there are no questions on that motion.
Thank you. The next item of business is the election of the directors of Whitecap. The advance notice date for the nomination of directors, having passed under Whitecap's advance notice bylaw, the only individuals entitled to be nominated as directors at this meeting are the persons named as nominees in Whitecap's information circular. Therefore, as directed by the board and in accordance with the information circular, Mary Jo E. Case, Grant B. Fagerheim, Daryl H. Gilbert, Chandra A. Henry, Glenn A. McNamara, Vineeta Maguire, Stephen C. Nikiforuk, myself, Kenneth S. Stickland, Bradley J. Wall, and Grant A. Zawalsky are nominated as directors of Whitecap to hold office until the next annual election of directors or until their successors are elected or appointed, subject to the provisions of the Business Corporations Act of Alberta and the bylaws of Whitecap. The next item of business is the appointment of auditors.
I move that PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP be appointed auditors of Whitecap until the next annual meeting or until their successor is appointed and that their remuneration, as such, be fixed by the board of directors.
I second the motion.
Thank you. The next item of business is to approve a non-binding advisory resolution concerning Whitecap's approach to executive compensation.
I move that the non-binding advisory resolution on page 24 of the information circular of Whitecap dated March 31st, 2023, be approved.
I second the motion.
Is there any discussion or question submitted from any registered proxy holder or shareholder?
Mr. Chairman, there are no questions on that motion.
As voting has been enabled for all previous motions, if a shareholder has not voted yet, please do so now. I'll declare voting as now being closed. We're just waiting for the scrutineers. I've been advised by the scrutineers that all resolutions have been approved by more than the requisite majority and that those nominated have been duly elected as directors of Whitecap. I also declare the motions carried and the nominees for the board of directors elected. Are there any questions submitted to the formal business of the meeting?
Mr. Chairman, there are no questions on the formal business of the meeting. Any questions received from management will be addressed with the CEO's remarks.
I will now entertain a motion that the meeting be terminated.
I move that this meeting be terminated.
I second the motion.
The meeting operator is activating a poll to vote on the termination of the meeting. While we're waiting for that poll to come through, I'd like to thank Grant and his team here. It's been a tremendous year, many achievements, and they've positioned the company very well for the future and go forward. In addition, I'd also like to extend a thanks to all of our staff and contractors and employees who have been dealing with some very difficult circumstances in Northern Alberta due to the wildfire situation. For those of you who are sitting in Calgary or listening in in Calgary, you'll know what I'm talking about. It's been very smoky the last few days, and I can't imagine the conditions that they've had to work under and what they've been dealing with.
Lastly, I'd like to thank and extend sincere thanks and appreciation for all the help and efforts that Greg Fletcher has contributed and made to the company and to the board. He's been a true gentleman and a pleasure to work with over my time at Whitecap, and he'll be greatly missed as a director of our corporation. Okay, we have now received confirmation that the adjournment passed. That motion is carried. I declare the meeting terminated, and I'm going to invite Mr. Fagerheim to deliver his remarks on behalf of Whitecap Management. Thank you, Grant.
Thanks very much, Ken, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for your time and interest in attending our 2023 Virtual AGM. Online with us today is our management team, along with many of our valued Whitecap employees in both our head office and field offices. These are the individuals that bring their continued best efforts to work every day, which allows us to achieve the strong operating and financial results each year. Our success can and will only continue with the hard work and commitment of yourselves. Sincere thanks from all shareholders to each of you. We also have all of our directors online with us today, and it is with their invaluable guidance and positive support through this past year that has allowed us to achieve the results we have and build Whitecap to the enviable company we are today. Big thanks to each of you.
Before introducing our slate of elected directors, I do want to provide, as Ken had done, a very special thanks to one of our founding directors, Greg Fletcher, for your 13 years of guidance, support, and coaching as a Whitecap director. We wish Greg all the best, as we know we have all learned much from Greg's insights, technical impact, and common sense over the many years. Sincere thanks, Greg. We are pleased to welcome our newest director to our team, Vineeta Maguire, who joins us as of today. Welcome, Vineeta. We look forward to working together with Vineeta going forward. As Ken had introduced the directors earlier, I just wanted to quickly go through and advise how long our directors have been with us.
Our Chairman, Ken Stickland, since 2013, Steve Nikiforuk, since 2009, Grant Zawalsky, since 2009, Glenn McNamara, since 2010, Daryl Gilbert, 2015, Brad Wall joined us in 2019, Mary Jo Case in 2021, Chandra Henry in 2022, and now with Vineeta Maguire in 2023. Myself, I've been a president, director, and CEO of the company since we started 14 years ago. Thanks to each of you. You put up with us this long. We got a long way to go. Thanks very much. My plan today is to provide a brief summary of our 2022 results and then provide an outline on our 2023 objectives and plans we have in front of us and well into the future. As Kenneth mentioned, 2022 was a stellar year for Whitecap on many fronts.
That included a couple of corporate acquisitions, one of which we will highlight in more detail further on, exceptional operational performance, and with a backdrop of strong commodity prices for both oil and natural gas, we had a blockbuster year of cash flow and financial results. After exiting Q4 2021 with 120,000 boe per day of production, 2022 started with the closing of the TimberRock acquisition on January 10th, 2022. This acquisition expanded our footprint in our core Central Alberta area, where we followed on with some exceptional drilling results that we talk about quarterly. Our business development team stayed on the hunt and provided our team with the opportunity to acquire the highly coveted XTO assets through a corporate acquisition. This acquisition was unique in that we paid CAD 1.88 billion for the company using only debt in our balance sheet and issued no equity as part of the acquisition.
The acquisition included a small but valuable team coming to Whitecap, approximately 32,000 boe per day of production, including facilities and, most importantly, an expansive drilling opportunity, drilling inventory in a highly sought-after Northwest Alberta Montney and Duvernay plays. And we are extremely excited to add this opportunity today for future growth into our company. You will hear much about this asset from us well into the future, I'm sure. The ultimate result is that Whitecap is more profitable, more sustainable, and more resilient than we have ever been in our 14-year history. Like 2021, when we were also very active countercyclically acquiring assets, we would not have been able to evaluate, negotiate, integrate, and operate these assets along with our existing assets as effectively as we have without the efforts of our entire head office and field staff. A huge shout-out to our fellow Whitecappers for getting us here.
The result is another year of strong operational performance, and with the inclusion of the acquisitions, our results in 2022 were mighty fine, I must say. Production of 144,500 boe per day, 71% oil and liquids, on a disciplined development capital program of CAD 687 million, drilling 214 or 173 net wells across our core business units, a 40% increase in wells drilled over 2021. We generated funds flow of CAD $2.3 billion or $3.74 per fully diluted share, a 105% increase over 2021. And even after closing of the CAD $1.88 billion XTO acquisition on September the 1st, we exited the year with debt of CAD $1.9 billion. We increased our reserves over year-end 2021 by 18% on approved developed producing basis, 47% on a total approved basis, and 58% on approved plus probable basis.
As for the return of capital to shareholders, we bought back 22.7 million shares for CAD 243 million and provided our shareholders with dividend payments of CAD 242.5 million for total shareholder returns of CAD 486 million. That brings our total dividends paid to shareholders of CAD 1.4 billion or CAD 4.16 per share since 2013 to the year-end 2022. With regards to our carbon capture project in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, we sequestered and stored 1.9 million tons of CO2 and 15,000 tons of CO2 at our Joffre, Alberta project, all the while maintaining an exceptionally strong safety and environmental performance record throughout the year. Now to talk about 2023. Our team came into the 2023 year ready to get after our drilling opportunities that we have in each of our core operating areas.
Our plan includes a disciplined approach to grow our base level of production while ensuring we maintain a consistent dividend that we can increase as we continue to grow our production and cash flow. Our intention in 2023 is to focus on providing strong operational results from our drilling and optimization activities in each of our business units across Western Canada. Our extensive inventory of high-quality drilling opportunities is very large at 6,485 wells, which provides us with in excess of 25 years from which to continue to grow from. We expect to spend between CAD 900 million to CAD 950 million of capital to drill approximately 240 wells across our assets from Southeast Saskatchewan through our Central Alberta and up into our Northwest Alberta core operating region.
We expect to deliver approximately 160,000 boe per day of average production and an exit the year producing approximately 170,000 boe per day, which on a per-share basis is 13% growth over 2023. From a cash flow perspective, we are forecasting another strong cash flow year of $1.7-$1.8 billion, even with both natural gas and crude oil prices being extremely volatile to this point in 2023. Importantly, from a returns perspective, we currently pay to our shareholders an annual dividend of $0.58 per share that we moved to in January when we achieved our first internally set debt milestone of $1.8 billion of debt. Our next debt milestone of $1.3 billion is within reach soon, and our intention is to increase our annual dividend an additional 26% to $0.73 per share once this milestone is achieved.
Moving forward for the remainder of this year, we expect oil and liquid pricing to remain strong, but admittedly, not as strong as the $95 WTI price we enjoyed in 2022. We believe prices will average between $70-$85 WTI for the 2023 year. As for natural gas prices, we expect this summer to average somewhere around $2 per GJ, with a winter price of between $3.25-$4 per GJ. With these projected commodity prices, along with efficient capital spending we have planned, we expect to generate substantial amounts of free cash flow after capital and dividends of over $500 million. Let me talk about our priorities for our company at this time. Firstly, debt and balance sheet management.
On a long-term basis, we commit to continuing our practice of prudently managing our balance sheet throughout the commodity price cycles with debt to cash flow levels at or below 1.5 times debt to cash flow current levels in 2023 projections at 0.6 times debt to cash flow. Our current net debt is approximately CAD 1.4 billion on a total capacity of 3.1 billion, providing significant excess capacity. As mentioned earlier, we contemplate reaching our CAD 1.3 billion debt milestone target late in the second quarter or in the third quarter and continuing to reduce our debt to CAD 1.1-CAD 1.2 billion debt level by year-end 2023. Secondly, our dividend strategy. As outlined earlier, with our debt management milestone target, we plan to increase our annual dividend to shareholders by 26% to CAD 0.73 per share.
This will be our second increase in 2023, as we increased our dividend by 32% from CAD 0.44 per share to CAD 0.58 per share in early January. We then expect to have future increases that are consistent with our corporate per-share growth targets. Overarching strategy is to ensure that our dividend is sustainable down to the $50 WTI level, and we never have to reduce it into the future. Thirdly, production growth. We target 3%-8% organic per-share growth, supplemented with and enhanced by future acquisitions and our share buyback program. As I referenced earlier, 2023 growth over 2022 is projected to be 13% per share, with an exit 2023 over 2022 exit rate to be 9% per share, in essence, falling in line with our outline growth plan.
With the size of our company at this time and with the assets that include oil-rich projects in Saskatchewan through to our liquids-rich natural gas assets in Northwest Alberta and in Central Alberta, we have the option of taking advantage of load-leveling our program while maintaining safe and consistent operations. We believe this helps to mitigate current inflationary pressures, making longer-term commitments to our service sector who provide their expertise to us on a daily basis. Fourthly, share buybacks. Our objective is to use our normal course issuer bid to mitigate downside volatility and clear large blocks in the market when they are made available. From 2017 to today, we have bought back 67.5 million Whitecap shares for CAD 522 million or CAD 7.74 per share. We also bought 3.45 million shares in 2023 to date.
One of our specific criteria when buying our shares is to have an understanding of our current intrinsic value based on our year-end 2022 independent reserve evaluation. At this time, we project our proved developed producing net asset value to be approximately CAD 8 per share and our total proved value to be at CAD 16 per share with our proved plus probable value in excess of CAD 24 per share. Given current valuations relative to cash flows, it certainly makes sense to be buying back shares at our current trading levels. We will continue to look to do that at the appropriate times moving forward. Number five, risk management. Our objective with our risk management hedging program is to protect sufficient levels of production and cash flow that allows our company to invest within annual cash flows and pay a consistent and growing dividend into the future, as discussed.
At this time, we have approximately 16% of our crude oil hedge for the balance of 2023 and 26% of our natural gas hedge for the second quarter and third quarter of 2023, and 10% hedged in fourth quarter of 2023. As we advance through this year, we will be increasing both our crude oil and natural gas hedges in 2024 from the current levels of 10% on oil and 3% on natural gas. We also will be initiating starter positions in 2025. To talk about our new energy team and program, the objective of our new energy team has been to assist us in advancing to a lower carbon economy through the subsurface technical expertise we are fortunate to have within Whitecap. At Whitecap, we believe that energy transformation is underway.
We also think that it is important to be realistic about the extended timeframes and the large amounts of capital that are required for these projects to be completed. Specific to Whitecap, our team has certainly not disappointed us with the number of opportunities they have been engaged on in both Saskatchewan and Alberta. The activities of our new energy team are multifaceted, including identifying and engaging large emitters who are driven to capture CO2 and other fugitive emissions, provide technical and financial project scoping for compression, transportation, and sequestration, and to work with governments on regulations and financial incentive structures that allow us to move to final investment decision. We currently are advancing on two specific projects, one with Federated Co-op in Saskatchewan and another with Wolf Midstream and Air Products in Alberta, both of which we hope have commercially operable by the end of 2024.
We also have other projects we are advancing on that will be discussed when we have sufficient enough information to provide. We are keen to advance these initiatives, and we'll keep you posted. To talk about the much-discussed Alberta wildfires. With regards to our current wildfires that are burning in North Central Alberta, my comments today are provided is that we are living in real time with an extremely fluid situation, fluid and dynamic situation with changes taking place daily and perhaps hourly. Our number one priority has been for the safety of our staff and contractors and their families, as well as the emergency responders and all of those that are involved in this challenging situation.
With regards to the impact on Whitecap production since May the 5th when the fires began, we have suspended as little as 12,000 boe per day to as much as 40,000 boe per day, or between 7%-25% of our total production. Through the last week and over the past weekend, we were closer to the low end of the range. However, with ever-changing winds and weather, we now have approximately 26,000 boe per day suspended. These shut-in volumes are in effect and are on our operated facility as well as also third-party facilities that we do not have control over, and ongoing communication and cooperation between the various parties is necessary. We do not have any damage to our infrastructure from these fires, and our field team is doing a fantastic job staying on top of the rapidly changing environment.
We are not able to provide a full and complete summary or updated guidance on our corporate impact at this time from the fires due to the fluid nature of this event. Our head office team, together with our field team, will remain diligent on keeping personnel safe and our infrastructure unharmed and bring our production back to full capacity as soon as it is safe to do so. In closing, I must say that our journey over the past 14 years has brought many challenges, but also many rewards as we have maneuvered from our 850 boe per day starter kit in 2009 to successfully building the resilient, profitable, and sustainable business we are today.
With production of over 150,000 boe per day and a plan to continue to grow our oil and gas business with current drilling inventory to in excess of 300,000 boe per day, 2023 estimated cash flow, as I talked about earlier, between CAD 1.7 billion to CAD 1.8 billion, a debt credit line of CAD 3.1 billion with only CAD 1.4 billion of net debt at this time providing ample liquidity. With confidence, I can say that with the team in both our office and the field, with the assets we currently have under management, the processes we employ on a daily basis, and the current investment opportunities we have, we will continue on our path of creating significant incremental value for our shareholders, both in regard to growth and return on capital to shareholders. For those of you on this call that are shareholders, thank you.
For those of you who are not currently, jump on board, and we'll make sure that we do our best to provide you with strong returns going forward. On behalf of all of us at Whitecap, sincere thank you for your time today and for your support of our Whitecap story. Cheers and have a good day.
That concludes today's webcast. Thank you.