Chevron Corporation (NYSE:CVX) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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So, that all happens sequentially here over the next period of time, which leads to commissioning the pressure boost compressors in the third quarter and then converting the field from beginning the conversion from high to low pressure by the end of the year. A couple of things that will bear on production. We’ve got two planned turnarounds of the old processing trains. They’re called the KTL. There’s five of them. We had two turnarounds this year that are planned in the third quarter. So those will be down for a period of time. And then as those come back up, production may not fully recover on those two as some of the wells won’t resume flowing until we get to the low-pressure system. So, back half of the year, you’ll see a little bit of that impact.

And then as we move into ’24, we’ve got more of these high pressure to low-pressure conversions in the field and we’ve got FGP start-up first half of ’24. So you don’t see the full effect of FGP roll through, you get partial effect in ramping in ’24, and then the full effect will show in ’25. Cash will kind of follow that pattern. So Pierre, maybe you can talk about the pattern on CapEx and dividends.

Pierre Breber: Yes. For 2023, the TCO dividends are included in the guidance we provided, $5 billion, $6 billion, which is up from what our total dividends that we received last year. We did indicate that TCO has held a little excess cash during the course of last year just due to uncertainties that are going on right now. The CapEx was included in our December release. So it’s nearly half of the $3 billion of — affiliate CapEx, so that’s $1.5 billion. Again, you would expect that to continue to roll off next year. And then if you go back to our Investor Day, we showed that at $60 Brent post start-up in a full year of FGP production, that the free cash flow coming out of TCO on 100% basis would be $10 billion. And again, that’s a $60 Brent.

We’ll provide further updates as we normally do on Investor Day. But the takeaway, as we’ve said for a long time, now we’ve been investing in this project for six plus years through COVID, through the ups and downs, when it starts up, it will generate a lot of free cash flow. We’ll see that in the form of dividends, and we’ll see that in the form of paying back some of the loans that we co-lend into TCO.

Mike Wirth: Devin, just to kind of put a final punctuation on that. In our Investor Day last year, we showed in 2026, so once we get fully on the other side of all this stuff I just described, a 5x expansion in free cash flow out of TCO versus 2021. So it’s meaningful.

Devin McDermott: Okay. Great. Thank you very much for the helpful answer there. And thinking about this year, 2023 in more detail. You talked about 0% to 3% total production growth for the year, led by sale in the Permian. And last year, you had another strong one for the Permian unit volumes were up 16%. I was wondering if you could just talk through your expectations for that asset in 2023, whether or not you’re adding rigs there, overall activity trends? And then more broadly within that 2% to 3% range, what are some of the drivers that can move to the upper or lower end as we move through the year.

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