Obsidian Energy Ltd. (OBE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to Obsidian Energy's 2024 Annual and Special General Meeting Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to turn the conference over to Stephen E. Loukas, President and CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning to all, and thank you for joining today's call. Before we start, I'd like to first point out that we will refer to forward-looking information in connection with Obsidian Energy and the subject matter of today's call. By its nature, this information contains forecasts, assumptions and expectations about future outcomes, so we remind you it is subject to the risks and uncertainties affecting every business, including ours. Please refer to the disclosure at the end of the presentation along with our public disclosure filings available on both SEDAR+ and EDGAR systems for a full discussion of significant factors and risks that could affect Obsidian Energy or that could affect future outcomes for the company. With that, I'd like to turn your attention to Page 3, and I like to walk you through a very quick corporate overview. Our assets are world-class, and our team is experienced in delivering value. For 2024, we are estimating approximately 36,000 BOE a day of production at the midpoint of our guidance. That translates to approximately 12% year-on-year growth. Our production mix is estimated to be approximately 65% oil and liquids with the balance being natural gas. At year-end 2023, reserves on a 2P basis were approximately 194 million barrels of equivalent. That translates into a reserve life index of approximately 14 years with a PDP decline rate of approximately 21%. Lastly, we have an advantaged tax pool position with approximately $2.4 billion in the year-end tax pools. Just looking at our balance sheet, we have approximately 76.6 million shares outstanding, translating to a market capitalization of approximately $905 million with $386 million of net debt as of quarter end March 31. That translates into an annualized FFO rate of approximately 1.1x, and we would anticipate that, that number will come down significantly at quarter end as of June 30, given increased cash flow and debt repayment. In summary, that translates into an enterprise value of approximately $1.3 billion. Turning to Page 4, just to quickly walk you through our strategic advantages and what differentiates Obsidian Energy from its peers. There are a couple of key points. One, we've got top-quality assets, which translates into a diversified portfolio of low decline oil weighted assets with approximately 14 years of reserves across both the light and heavy oil production mix. We have a number of established core areas which provide sustainable resource development and translates into stable production and cash flow. We have a significant amount of exploration upside, which we are pursuing via our programs in both the Bluesky and the Clearwater in our Peace River play. We have a stable financial position and the ability to self-fund that growth profile while also providing the return of capital to shareholders, which we have aggressively done so via a share buyback program. Lastly, we've got technical excellence, which is in the way of proven expertise and knowledge of subsurface assets, drilling techniques and operational design, and we've managed to improve our efficiencies and returns through capital and operating cost reduction. Additionally, we're committed to strong ESG practices to improve people's lives and minimize the environmental impact that we have in the areas that we operate. Turning to Page 5. Our strategy is multipronged that can be described as follows. We have a goal of driving per share growth via production growth, share buybacks and debt reduction. Our intent is to use our free cash flow from our light oil assets to invest in our Peace River heavy oil growth asset and we've outlined the plan to aggressively grow production to approximately 50,000 BOEs by 2026, representing a 3-year CAGR of approximately 16%. And lastly, we intend to accomplish all that while maintaining prudent leverage with an estimated 2024 net debt-to-FFO ratio of sub-1x. Turning to Page 6, just to focus on a number of highlights that are occurring during 2024. As previously outlined, we intend to deliver 12% production growth. We anticipate our per share production growth will be even greater given our active share buyback program we intend to generate free cash flow at the commodity price assumptions that we have outlined that will translate into stable debt levels, and we believe the cumulative impact of that will increase our shareholder value. From an operational perspective, our intent is to spend approximately $345 million to $355 million and capital expenditures with an incremental $25 million which includes an incremental -- approximately $25 million for exploration and appraisal. Our growth is weighted towards our Peace River asset. We've been actively developing and derisking our Walrus Bluesky, and we've fast-tracked our development within our Dawson Clearwater play. We've drilled a number of OEC wells to further test our acreage across both formations, and we'll have more to say about that in the second half of this year. From a financial perspective, we continue to reaffirm our FFO goal of approximately $400 million at the outlined commodity price assumptions, and we repurchased and canceled approximately $3.2 million of our senior unsecured notes during the quarter. During the quarter, we also expanded our debt capacity to further enhance our liquidity via the expansion of our credit facility by approximately $20 million to $260 million. Additionally, during the quarter, we purchased and canceled approximately 1.05 million shares spending approximately $10.5 million, and we renewed our NCIB into 2025. And with that, I'll turn it over to our CFO, Peter Scott, who will walk you through our 2024 guidance.

Great. Thanks, Steve. Good morning, everybody. Yes, I'll give you a little bit more detail on our guidance here. As you can see on the Slide 7, on the left-hand side, we're giving you some of the inputs and outputs. On the right-hand side, we're showing you the heavy oil and light oil breakdown of our business. So as Steve mentioned, we're looking for midpoint of our guidance, 12% growth in production, that's 36,000 BOEs a day. You can see the range there from [ 35,250 to 36,750 ]. Drawing your attention to the right, you can see that's made up of 8,500 BOEs a day of heavy oil, 27,500 BOEs a day of light oil. Production growth is coming primarily from the heavy oil side of our business in Peace River, but we are also growing some light oil production volumes. In terms of capital expenditures, as Steve outlined, the way that's broken down to the heavy oil business is about $180 million and then about $165 million in the light oil business. The difference between the $350 million midpoint is just some other corporate capital expenditures. In terms of the heavy oil business, it will be a net user of cash. We are investing in the heavy oil business to grow that production and reach it to a critical mass point which will probably happen later into 2025, crossing into 2026 and we're funding that with the light oil business, which you can see generate significant amount of free cash flow at the asset level of $185 million. So translating that corporately using $75 WTI. We do expect to generate $400 million of funds flow from operation and free cash flow of $27 million. Again, that's at a $75 WTI price. That would translate into net debt at the end of the year of about $315 million or a leverage ratio of 0.8x. So again, below that 1x target that we're looking for at the end of the year. From a sensitivity standpoint, obviously, given our oil and liquids weighting, we are pretty sensitive to WTI prices. At the bottom of the chart, you can see a $1 change in WTI is almost $7 million. This is for the last 9 months of the year because obviously, Q1 is already actual. And then you can see for the light oil differential at Edmonton, it's $4.7 million; and then for heavy oil, it's $2.4 million. So again, very sensitive to oil prices, which gives us lots of leverage to the upside in prices going forward. Just drawing your attention to the graph on the bottom right, on how our production growth through the year Obviously, with Q1, we have grown production from Q4. We expect it to continue to grow in Q2 and then it will come down slightly in Q3 as capital spending is much lower in Q2 due to spring breakup and then start to build again in Q4 which is reflected in that graph. So next slide. So just looking at how we're doing in Q1, specifically, as mentioned, production is 34,238 BOEs a day, obviously, growing from where we were in 2022 and 2023. And you can see on the graph on the right-hand side, how that production is built back from 2021. And the line on that graph shows you how it's grown per share. Capital expenditures, $114 million in the quarter, a busy quarter for us, which it traditionally is following on from Q4 as well as, again, with decommissioning expenditures. Again, that's due to winter access areas where we're being active. Solid cost performance on net operating costs down from where we were previously in '22 and '23, well within our guidance. And then looking at G&A, it is up a little bit here in Q1 at $1.77 per BOE. We have been adding staff as we've been executing on our capital program. We do expect this number to come down on a per BOE basis, as I just showed you with production continuing to grow and expect that to fall within our range that we had on the previous slide. Fund flow from operation was $84.4 million. We did -- were a net user of cash as expected in the quarter of $40 million plus the $10 million of buyback. That did bring net debt to $386 million, which is up from year-end. But again, as expected, a net debt to funds flow ratio as Steve mentioned at 1.1x both debt and leverage levels will come down as we go forward here, Q2 is a very light capital quarter and we expect it to fall with the increase in production and increasing cash flows. Prices have also been stronger than where they were in Q1. In the chart on the right-hand side, you can see how net debt has come down from where we were in 2020. And with that, I'll turn it over to Jay.

Yes. Thank you very much, Peter. I'm Jay McGilvary, the Senior Director of Development at Obsidian Energy. It's my pleasure today to speak to you all about our first half development and exploration programs and also the year ahead. This first half of 2024 is the start of the ambitious 3-year growth plan that both Steve and Peter have been speaking to and will reference throughout the presentation today. We ran five active drilling rigs in the first half of 2024, two in our Cardium assets, Pembina and Willesden Green; and three in Peace River focused on Bluesky and Clearwater development and exploration. In January, when we presented our proposed guidance, we had planned to drill 30 total wells in the first half of the year. And we had just established a strong Clearwater production results in Dawson, including the first well in 7-13, which produced an IP30 312 BOE per day at 100% oil. We saw these results as an opportunity to accelerate our first half activity and as a result, we've increased our first half budget of 30 gross operated wells to an accelerated plan of 34. We'll drill these four additional Clearwater wells in Dawson in the first half of the year, and we'll have a drilling rigs actively drilling Clearwater wells throughout the second quarter. We will also complete at least one more Cardium well than initially planned, and the table on this slide reflects these changes. Additionally, while I speak to some of the new drilling results throughout the first quarter, it's important to note that in April alone, we've brought on 17 operated and 1.4 net non-operated wells, many of which are displaying promising early days of production, but are too early to speak to at this time. While it's early to speak to most of these, it's worth noting that the pace of activity over the last month has been very significant. On Slide 10, front and center in our 2024 budget is the increase in the scope and scale of our investment in the Peace River heavy oil asset. The discovery of our Walrus Bluesky field, combined with the emergence of the Clearwater play into the region is a catalyst of our 3-year growth plan. If you follow closely Obsidian's journey in the asset over the past two years, our increase in land position and infrastructure footprint have been apparent and it continues to expand. We have increased our development opportunities and ensured capacity grow with increased facility and sales point options. Behind the scenes, we have staffed up with an incredibly strong technical team who have led a renewed exploration appraisal program on the asset throughout the last year. At the start of the year, we released preliminary well results of these efforts. In Walrus, we have just brought on our second major Bluesky pad with 6 wells all still in cleanup. We are continuing with our vertically stacked development pilot on this pad, which showed very promising results on the 13 and 19 pad next door in Q4. With the stack development design come significant drilling inventory, reserve adds and improved capital efficiencies from the shared surface facilities. We'll be optimizing this pad in the weeks ahead. On Slide 11, in detail on our first half program, beyond the 15 it's 19, 6, well development pad in Walrus, the first 2024 results in our Bluesky program come from our 8 to 28 pad drilled in Harmon Valley South. The 2-well pad came on production in early April, stepping back into a portion of the reservoir that we saw is underperforming in the past. The wells are displaying an average IP 25 per well of 533 BOE per day or more than double our type curve expectations. We are now pivoting to plan for additional follow applications in the second half of the year for this patent. The second part of our half 1 activity was our exploration and appraisal programs. This starts with the five vertical oil sands evaluation wells denoted by the yellow dots on the map. To gain reservoir information in prospective new areas. The program was focused on coring multiple zones in the Bluesky and Clearwater throughout our acreage. We're very pleased with the results of this program, which delineated meaningful reservoir extensions in multiple areas of the Peace River acreage. The second part of our exploration program is our whipstock drilling, where we focus on Clearwater opportunities in our Nampa acreage up in the Northeast. For [ WIP stock ] well, we drill and core an initial vertical leg to evaluate the reservoir prior to kicking off into multi-leg horizontal well. This has the benefit of gathering key reservoir data and also optimizing horizontal placement of the future drilling well while still providing a productivity test from a horizontal well. In late February, we released the first of these results on our Nampa 6-28 pad, which displayed an IP 15 of 210 BOE per day and 16-degree a PI oil before being shut in due to surface restrictions due to breakup. The second well in South Nampa was unfortunately access limited before testing was complete, and we'll need to reaccess the pad once freezing conditions allow again later in the year. Diving into more detail on our Clearwater asset. We now have added the slide giving more detail on our Dawson area. We are currently drilling our eighth Clearwater well in Dawson. And as stated before, we saw exceptional results from our South Dawson 7-13 pad at the end of last year. So in H1 2024, we drilled each of the offsetting wells to 7-13, one on either side. And while those wells have only been on production for 6 days, we are encouraged by the promising early results. At the end of half 1, we will have drilled 11 wells in this acreage and proven up a significant inventory for a continuous development program on this asset going forward. As the Northwest corner of the field, we drilled the orange dot OSE well, a vertical oil sands evaluation Core well. There is emerging clear water industry activity in this area that follows along that greater Dawson trend, and we plan to follow up with horizontal producing wells later in 2024 here as well. On to Slide 13. If Peace River is our growth catalyst, our light oil assets are the engine of the company. Our Cardium position is the best in the basin with core acreage throughout both Pembina and Willesden Green, the heart of the Cardium. Though the Cardium has been around for decades, the significant book locations prove that development of these assets still has a significant runway. And our growth plan Cardium remains the foundation of our growth with strong repeatable economic results. At the bottom of the page, the Viking is not currently in our 2024 plans, but we keep the entire program ready should it be needed. Of the eight wells we drilled at the very end of 2023, six of them made the top 15 Viking well list in at least one analyst report for February. Those wells offset the 11 wells drilled in early 2023, which are identified some of the top Viking producers in the entire basin last year. If commodity prices and need present themselves, we can layer in Viking activity at any moment. Specifically on Slide 14 in our Cardium play. Our Cardium development continues to provide dependable economic results and a deep proven reserves inventory of 200-plus locations. Visible in the Purple production wedge graph is our track record of consistent 3-year growth of these assets. As a bull-point highlights, we have completed detailed reservoir models on all of our primary Cardium assets to provide confidence on these opportunities well into the future. In the first half of this year, we drilled the 14 of 15 follow-up well to the 11 to 15 well in Open Creek on the 9-17 pad. These results are highlighted on the right-hand side of this page. The original 11-15 was one of the top Cardium wells drilled last year, and the 14 to 15 in its initial results are showing very promising encouraging similarities. This proportion of our field has not seen significant horizontal infill drilling but a strong well has opened the door going forward, and there are over 20 promising gross book locations to follow up in Open Creek as part of our light oil drilling portfolio. Specifically, on Slide 15, and our first half program. We are currently down for breakup and no additional drilling is taking place at this time, but we are still continuing completion operations in South Willesden Green. Three new pads have come on production in Cardium in April. And as we went into detail, one of these on the 9-17 pad on the previous slide. Additionally, the two at 13, 3-well pad in Crimson showed an IP-10 of 321 BOE per day per well, and 6 of 8 3-well pad in Pembina has shown an IP 10 of 366 BOE per day per well and comparatively strong results across our entire Cardium acreage. While we always maintain a strong inventory of drill-ready locations in the Cardium, additionally, we also pursue non-drilling, very economic projects in our historical waterflood assets. And we successfully converted three additional injector wells in the first half of the year to reduce trucking cost and maintain our low decline. The first half of 2024 has displayed strong results across all the fields and formations in our portfolio. We have a balanced exploration program with strong development results as our pace continues to increase with our growth plan, this campaign represents a strong foundation which you can build upon. With that, I'll pass it back over to Peter to provide details about the value of our tax pools.

Thanks, Jay. Appreciate that. So on Slide 16, we're trying to give you some information about our tax pool, which I think is obviously a very important asset that we do have that probably not really appreciated by the market. In total, we have about $2.4 billion of tax pools, as you can see on the right-hand side. Of those, about $1.8 billion are immediately deductible. So in other words, can be used to shelter our free cash flow. I think this is important because as you're probably seeing with some of our competitors, they are becoming taxable at these prices. With these tax pools, this will allow us to shelter that free cash flow. And if you look at our 3-year plan, you can see we have free cash flow each year, but really building in 2026 once the Peace River asset reaches that critical mass. And so it's important to be able to shelter that and be able to save that cash tax payment that would otherwise be owed. Just to give you -- try to contextualize it for you on a per share basis. If you look on the left-hand side, we're showing if we use those tax pools at either a $200 million to up to $500 million per year rate and what that would translate into a value, we've used an 8% discount rate because the tax pools are ascertain, and so we can't use them. And so that's why we've used a lower discount rate there. But that translates into $4.35 to up to $5.59 per share. So some pretty significant share value that we get to attribute go forward as we save these cash taxes. The bottom part of the table just assumes if we were able to immediately deduct all those $1.8 billion tax pools, it comes up to about $6.54 a share. So needless to say, an important asset that we have will be able to shelter our taxable income for many years go forward, which is a benefit for all of us. So next slide, just looking at our reserves, our reserves really underpin the value of the company. What we're showing you here is the three different reserve categories, proved about producing 1P and 2P and then at different price decks. So US WTI $65 flat, $75 flat and $85 flat and from that, you can see we get a range of value of $1.1 billion, up to $2.8 billion in the 2P case. And so that will allow you to triangulate our reserve value based on perhaps the price deck that you might be looking at. On the right-hand side, we're translating that into a per share value on a NAV basis so taking off our debt. When you look at that, you can see on the top chart that when we made this graph, our share price was $11.81. Our PDP valuation essentially is there or higher on a 1P and certainly on a 2P basis. And then when you look at the 1P and 2P being layered on, you can see a share price underlying that anywhere from $9.09 up to $30 per share. So suffice it to say, I think our reserve book certainly underpins the value of our share price. It doesn't include any of the upside that we have for all of the undeveloped inventory that's not included in our reserves. Last point on this graph is just our growth in reserves on a volume basis. As you can see, with each category, we've grown those over the last three years and more importantly, on a per share basis that you can see on the line graph. And with that, I'll turn it back to Steve to conclude.

Thanks, Peter. I'll turn your attention to Page 18 and why investors should invest in Obsidian Energy. One, we are a low decline oil-weighted asset base with significant underlying reserves. Our strategy is focused on growing Peace River production and per share metrics with an expectation to continue to return capital to shareholders as well as further reduce debt leverage levels. We trade at a significant discount on both a reserve value and cash flow multiple basis when compared to our peers. We've been active with our share buyback program through our NCIB. We've purchased and canceled approximately 8% of shares outstanding between May of last year and May 1, 2024, which translates to approximately 6.4 million shares and $60.6 million in capital expended. And we've renewed our NCIB share buyback program for another year. We have significant taxable position, which allows Obsidian Energy to be a noncash taxpayer for approximately 10 years, assuming $75 WTI. And lastly, we are dedicated to making a positive difference in the environment stakeholders and the communities where we live and work. And with that, that concludes our prepared remarks, and we'll pause, and we'll start the Q&A session shortly.

All right. Thank you very much, gentlemen. My name is Susan Soprovich. I am Investor Relations for Obsidian Energy. And we will start our Q&A session. So if anybody on the webcast has any questions, please submit them. But in the meantime, we will start with some questions that came in previous to today. And the first one is regarding our Q1 2024 production. Several questions about the estimates in February versus average production a little bit lower for the full quarter. What happened to affect the production in Q1? What's the appropriate production now? And overall and why was it lower?

Thanks for the question, Susan. Yes. So we put out that press release in February about where our current production was, which was based on field estimates about 36,500. If you remember, January was very cold. We did have a negative production impact in January with wells coming on that obviously came up in February. We didn't have many wells coming on post that time frame. They've come on in April, as Jay has described. So production did decrease somewhat in March, and that's how we get to that average. We are expecting production to increase in Q2, as I outlined in my remarks, again, a slight dip in Q3 and then increasing again in Q4. So Obviously, with the amount of wells that we have coming on at various times of the year is what really impacts the production.

Thank you. We also have a question around our 3-year growth plan that we announced around seven months ago. Since then, we've drilled exploration infill and new area wells in Walrus, Nampa, Dawson. What have we learned? And how has the knowledge changed our strategy for increasing Peace River production?

Yes, I'm happy to take that. I think as we've outlined in our press release, we feel confident enough to pull forward our production and our drilling activity within Dawson or specifically the Clearwater and we've leaned in, in that regard. Very happy with what we're seeing on the Bluesky broadly defined. We've got full confidence that we will achieve kind of our plan. I think it's fair to say that we're a lot more confident that the ultimate potential of the asset is greater than what we've stated, and we'll have more to say in the quarters to come.

Turning a question to the financial aspects. With oil prices currently exceeding projections and in their $80 WTI range, how do we intend to deploy surplus funds? Are considerations being made for dividends, stock buybacks or further expansion endeavors?

Yes. From our perspective, I don't think you'll see a material change in our strategy. We've been active in the way of a share buyback program. And I would anticipate that, that would continue. We've been very upfront and consistent that we see better uses for our capital than paying a dividend at this juncture. It may be appropriate down the line, but right here right now, we don't think it's appropriate. And as it stands, I mean, our growth plan is on the aggressive side, and we don't have any intentions of expanding upon it in the immediate near term.

Following that up regarding the share buybacks, besides the semiannual cash flow sweep requirements will we consider dedicating 100% of free cash flow to the NCIB?

I think the way to think about it is we will dedicate our free cash flow where we think we get the best bang for our buck in regards to creating shareholder value. And if that so happens to be the NCIB then so be it, but if there's other opportunities that present themselves, I mean, we're obviously going to consider those. But I think it's fair to say that we've proven that we are serious when we say that our shares were and are undervalued, and we're prepared to buy them back.

Turning back to commodity prices. What is the impact of low natural gas prices on overall earnings per share for the quarter?

So on a sensitivity basis, natural gas prices are on slide 7 of the presentation, if you want to go back there. So a $0.25 change per GJ is approximately $1.5 million of funds flow from operations. For us, in the quarter, natural gas prices were probably pretty close to our budgets.

It wasn't a material impact in the quarter. It was a marginal negative and you've got the sensitivity on a go-forward basis outlined in the presentation. So you can make a fairly accurate guess on what the impact would be we have our budgeted price assumption also outlined in our guidance.

A couple of questions around our Viking asset, which Jay responded to. Questions about planning to drill Viking this summer like last year and what would cause our mind to do so? Or is it too late as well as are we looking to increase the production eventually up to 5,000 BOE per Day?

Yes. I mean it's not too late to drill in the summer if we were to so choose to. I think it's fair to say that some investors have extrapolated our intention to do so because they've seen us license wells. I think that would be a faulty observation. I think it's fair to say that we're constantly in the state of readiness in regards to ensuring that we have portfolio optionality. And I think right here, right now, we're very happy with the results that we're getting both in our heavy oil assets as well as in the Cardium. And our intention would be to not drill in the Viking in the summer.

Next question is around our Cardium assets. One investor wants to know more about the outcome of the deepest driven initiatives undertaken in the Cardium area a couple of years ago. Furthermore, they would appreciate insights on n of Obsidian's notable strength: Its reserves.

Sure. As it pertains to the deeper Cardium program. We did have a small campaign that was two-pronged in the deeper formations with the Cardium. One was just reentry recompletions of existing vertical wells that we had a very successful program in. And then we did have a modest drilling campaign with a vertical well. Really what's happened within our portfolio is that the emergence of the Clearwater and the economics associated with that has really just supplanted the value proposition for how we spend our exploration dollars. So while that still is part of our portfolio, it's part of there, and we're still going to look at optimization opportunities within that. It's just not part of our current go-forward plan in terms of exploration.

And a bit of a follow-up request if we have any results from the Cardium wells operated by Whitecap?

Sure. On the PCU 11 side, which is the bulk of our non-op activity. You see from the slide presentation, we have 20 non-operated wells. Within PCU 11, we expect about 12 gross wells to be drilled in the year. of which we are just under 45% working interest. For this year, only one of those wells has reached a meaningful IP 30 in terms of production days, but we're seeing 349 BOE a day from that first well, and we're excited about some of the early indications on the next two.

Turning to our capital program. After spending $114 million in the first quarter and adding four [indiscernible] wells, are we expecting to revise 2024 CapEx and what sort of CapEx are we expecting for Q2?

I would not anticipate a material revision to CapEx at this juncture. We're constantly tweaking CapEx as we make our way through the year. But I think it's fair to say that our guidance stands our initial guidance stands. And we won't really comment on Q2 specifics other than the fact that Peter has outlined that Q2 tends to be the seasonal low in the way of capital expenditures and by extension, you should anticipate significant free cash flow generation.

Looking at our hedging book. A couple of questions around the fact that we've added some April oil hedges for swaps and collars and then May was lower. Any specific reason for starting to hedging in April, a drop down, is there any desire to hedge if we see $85 again?

Yes. I mean, look, we're not going to comment on month-by-month activity. I think it's fair to say that we've been upfront about the fact that mid-80s is a very attractive price, and that's something that we would pursue. I think it's also fair to say that prices were not at $85 for May. We're in a backward dated market, and I think you might have gotten there for one day only. And so it's not as if it was there for a prolonged period of time, and we missed it.

Recent Pembina wells are better than in the past, Obsidian operates in PCU 8 and 11, how many potential PCU can be added on our land?

So PCU 11 is operated by White Cap. Obsidian operates probably north of 20 units actually in the Pembina that are subdivided so there's quite a few beyond just the two. So we are constantly looking at opportunities, but because of the extent of our footprint in the area, really, what we're looking at is small consolidation opportunities within Pembina not necessarily big unit tack-ons. We own the bulk of the primary reservoir already in that asset.

We've got one question regarding compensation at Obsidian Energy. And if there's plans to attract fresh talent or revise existing remuneration policies to better align with the company's trajectory.

I think it's fair to say that we feel quite confident with the quality of technical team as well as the other facets of our organization from a human resource perspective. As we outlined earlier, we have staffed up that did translate into slightly higher G&A during this quarter, we anticipate that we'll come back down on a per BOE basis as we grow production. We're feeling very confident as it relates to the quality of team that we have and very confident that our pay practices are in line, given the very low attrition rates that we've suffered over the last couple of years. So very comfortable in that regard.

Another question, could you shed some light on the financial ramifications stemming from the completion of the new B.C. West Coast pipeline project, understanding its implications on our financial landscape would be greatly beneficial.

Thanks for the question. Assuming we're referring to the Trans Mountain expansion, which I think is operational now or imminently. As it laid out in the presentation with sensitivities the impact for us is really on the WCS differential, which we are expecting to narrow. In Q1, that differential was $19.33 per barrel. Currently, I think it's trading at around $12 per barrel. For us, a $1 change in WCS on an annual basis. Remember in the presentation that's on a 9-month basis on an annual basis is about $4 million of funds flow for operations. So where we're sitting today, that $7 change is almost about $30 million of funds flow from operations. Of course, as production grows in the Peace River area that sensitivity, that $4 million will start to increase.

Turning to our drilling costs. Are you seeing much drilling cost reduction with the pad design you're currently using?

Yes, absolutely. Our drilling cost reduction is kind of coming on twofold. One is the scale of which our operations are taking place. The more scale we add, the more wells per pad, the average wells cost is reduced. But also as we progress that Clearwater learning curve, our wells are getting faster and more efficient. So we're seeing that cost come down tangibly.

What is the potential impact on Obsidian if Alberta's gas storage fills to its maximum capacity later this year?

Yes. Thanks again for the question. The way we set up our gas marketing operations, we feel confident that we would be able to still produce our gas which means the impact to us on a production basis should be nothing or very minimal at best. And as a result of that, because of that gas is associated gas. We're still able to produce all our oil Obviously, if storage fills gas prices will go down, but we are fairly well hedged on the gas side through the summer. So we feel reasonably well protected on that front.

At this point, there are no more questions being asked on line or on the webcast. Steve, would you like to close the meeting?

Sure. I just want to thank everyone for their participation and interest in Obsidian Energy. We look forward to talking to you soon.

This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.