Suncor Energy - Q4 2022
February 15, 2023
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Suncor Energy Fourth Quarter 2022 Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to Press Star one one on your telephone.
You will then hear an automated message advising your hand has been raised. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Mr. Troy Little, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Troy Little (VP of Investor Relations)
Thank you, operator, and good morning. Welcome to Suncor Energy's fourth quarter earnings call. Please note that today's comments contain forward-looking information. Actual results may differ materially from the expected results because of various risk factors and assumptions that are described in our fourth quarter earnings release, as well as in our current annual information form, both of which are available on SEDAR, EDGAR, and our website, Suncor.com.
Certain financial measures referred to in these comments are not prescribed by Canadian generally accepted accounting principles. For a description of these financial measures, please see our fourth quarter earnings release. We will start with comments from Kris Smith, Interim President and Chief Executive Officer, followed by Alister Cowan, Suncor's Chief Financial Officer.
Also on the call are three of our Senior Operating Leaders, Peter Zebedee, Executive Vice President, Mining and Upgrading, Shelley Powell, Senior Vice President, In Situ and E&P, and Arnel Santos, Senior Vice President, Refining and Logistics. Following the formal remarks, we'll open the call to questions. Now I'll hand it over to Kris to share his perspectives on the quarter.
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Thanks, Troy. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Since taking on the Interim CEO role of Suncor in July of last year, I've been fully committed to improving the safety and reliability of our operations. We're also maximizing our value capture by leveraging Suncor's difficult-to-replicate integrated model and driving fit and focus across our asset base. I want to begin our discussion today with an update on several initiatives we discussed at our recent Investor Day.
First, on safety. As planned, collision awareness systems are scheduled to go live at Syncrude's Aurora mine by the end of the first quarter, and we are on track to complete implementation of collision awareness and fatigue management technology systems across all mine sites. As well, we continue to drive sharp focus on safety performance across the entire company.
To that end, we have doubled the safety component weighting of our 2023 employee annual incentive program to ensure alignment with that focus. Second, with respect to costs. We are making progress on contractor workforce reductions in our Mining and Upgrading business and remain on track to achieve a 20% reduction by mid-2023. To be clear, these reductions will not be replaced by insourced workforce. Third, with respect to reliability.
Our upstream assets performed well overall during our very cold weather at the end of Q4. Syncrude achieved the highest full-year production in its history, while our Firebag in-situ assets set a new quarterly production record. With respect to Fort Hills, while there will be variability between quarters during the next three years, as outlined at our recent Investor Day, our performance improvement plan is progressing as expected.
By mid-2023, volumes will start to ramp up as our mine inventory increases until our planned five year fixed plant turnaround in July and August. Last, we continue to adjust our asset portfolio to focus more on our core integrated business. We completed the sale of our wind and solar assets and are making progress on the potential sale of our U.K. North Sea assets. We also closed the acquisition of an additional stake in Fort Hills from Teck Resources. Considering the smaller than expected interest we acquired, we are updating our annual production guidance for Fort Hills to reflect a corresponding decrease of 5,000 barrels per day for an annual range of 85,000-95,000 barrels per day. On to the quarter.
Looking at the fourth quarter results, Suncor generated adjusted funds from operations of CAD 4.2 billion or CAD 3.11 per share. Total upstream production averaged 763,000 barrels per day. 70% of this was Syncrude crude oil or synthetic crude oil, which commanded premium pricing due to higher distillate cut relative to WTI. 20% was non-upgraded bitumen from our in-situ operations in Fort Hills. Lastly, 10% came from our E&P segment and reflects the disposition of our Norway assets, which was completed in the third quarter.
Downstream generated CAD 1.7 billion of FIFO-adjusted funds from operations, with an average refinery utilization rate of 94%, and margin capture was strong at 99%. As previously communicated, our Commerce City refinery was put into safe mode following the impacts of the extreme weather in late December.
It has begun a progressive restart, and we expect it to come back to full production later in the first quarter. For the full year 2022, Suncor generated record adjusted funds from operations of CAD 18.1 billion, which is 67% higher than our previous annual record. We paid down CAD 3.2 billion of debt through the year, further strengthening our balance sheet.At the same time, through dividends and share buybacks, we returned record cash to shareholders of CAD 7.7 billion, representing nearly 45% of adjusted funds from operations for a 13% cash yield. We also continued to drive capital discipline across the company, and our capital expenditures for the year were CAD 4.9 billion, which was at the bottom end of our updated guidance range.
Now, before turning things over to Alister, I would like to highlight the significant progress we've made to date on the Oil Sands Pathways to Net Zero, a key lever in our sustainability leadership and the long-term decarbonization of the oil sands industry. Recently, it was seen that Pathways has signed an evaluation agreement with the province of Alberta, allowing further delineation of our allocated pore space. We hope to further advance this with a formal lease agreement before the end of 2023.
As well, front-end engineering and design of both the pipeline and sequestration facilities progresses as we continue to work with both the Canadian federal and Alberta provincial governments on the required fiscal and regulatory frameworks to enable these important projects. With that, I'll now pass it over to Alister to go through the financial results.
Alister Cowan (CFO)
Thanks, Kris, good morning, everyone. In the fourth quarter, Oil Sands delivered approximately CAD 2.9 billion of adjusted funds from operations with an average realization of CAD 97 per barrel. The quarterly performance reflects obviously lower commodity prices compared to Q3, specifically a decrease in WTI of $9 US per barrel, as well as a $5 U.S. per barrel decrease in the SCO premium. We also saw that light heavy differentials widened by including $6 U.S. per barrel, but the upstream impact was offset by a benefit in downstream due to our physical integration. Softening commodity prices quarter-over-quarter were partially offset by higher production following completion of significant turnaround activities at the Base Plant and Syncrude upgraders.
On an annual basis, cash costs per barrel for Oil Sands operations, Fort Hills and Syncrude came in as forecast, reflecting industry-wide inflationary pressures as well as mine progression work that we discussed in some detail at our Investor Day last November. As benefits from our enterprise-wide systems implementation and other digital initiatives start to come through, we continue to focus on employee and contractor workforce reductions over 2023 and 2024. Our E&P segment generated CAD 720 million of adjusted funds from operations in the quarter, reflecting average price realizations of CAD 122 per barrel. As Kris said, Downstream generated CAD 1.7 billion of adjusted funds from operations, and excluding a CAD 440 million FIFO loss in the quarter, this would have been CAD 2.1 billion on a LIFO basis.
This performance demonstrates the strength and competitive advantage of our integrated model, which enabled us to capture robust benchmark cracks and lower feedstock costs with widening heavy differentials. As a result, we achieved margin capture of 99% through the quarter. Suncor returned CAD 1.4 billion to shareholders, including AD 700 million in dividends and CAD 725 million in share buybacks in the fourth quarter. On a full-year basis, that's 117 million shares repurchased and CAD 7.7 billion of total value returned to shareholders, or approximately 13% of our market cap. Our quarterly dividend is now the highest in the company's history after the most recent increase of 11% to CAD 0.52 per share.
As Kris said, we continue to strengthen the balance sheet and reduce net debt during the year by CAD 3.2 billion, excluding FX impacts on U.S. dollar accumulated debt. As previously noted, we intend to increase excess funds flow to buybacks to 75% by the end of Q1. Subsequent to the fourth quarter, the board approved a renewal of the company's share repurchase program for up to 10% of Suncor's issued and outstanding common shares as of 3rd February 2023, and this program is planned to begin on 17th February 2023. I'll pass it back to Kris for his closing comments.
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Great. Thanks, Alister. Over my last six months as Interim CEO, I've placed my focus on setting the foundation for improved performance through operational excellence and a strong safety and performance culture with focus and follow-through. Our continued focus will be not only to build on that momentum, but to accelerate it, driving delivery of safe, reliable operations, capital discipline, reducing our cost structure, and growing shareholder returns. Suncor has an unparalleled set of assets in the Canadian Oil Sands, coupled with an unmatched integrated model. We see great opportunities in front of Suncor to leverage those competitive differentiators to drive value for our shareholders in both the short and the long term, and that is our focus. With that, I look forward to any questions you may have, and I'll turn it back over to you, Troy.
Troy Little (VP of Investor Relations)
Thank you, Kris and Alister. I'll turn the call back to the operator to take some questions.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Dennis Fong with CIBC.
Dennis Fong (Equity Research Analyst)
Hi, good morning. Appreciate you answering our questions this morning. First and foremost. Understanding that there were some comments around margin capture from the refining business. I was hoping that you could outline some of the operational impacts from the supply and trading business unit, really given the combination of price volatility and some of the other, we'll call it, items like potentially ramping up Commerce City.
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
No, thanks very much, Dennis, for that question. We're very proud of our supply and trading organization. You know, that organization's been in place for over 20 years, and we've been putting a lot of work and focus on growing it and creating greater impact from that part of the organization. It's based in Calgary, but we also have significant trading and marketing operations in Houston as well as an office in London, UK. What I'd say is that organization, as we manage the operations, it looks to increase the value capture and maximize that margin by leveraging our logistics positions, working closely with both upstream and downstream, and also ensuring that we're maximizing our asset-backed trading activities around that as well.
Examples would be, I mean, obviously, we had the shutdown of the Commerce City refinery that we put into safe mode because of the extreme weather events that happened in late December in the Midwest and Gulf Coast. Our supply and trading organization was able to react quickly to manage both crude feedstock supply into that facility, but also product supply into the PADD4 region. Another example would be with the Keystone outage that occurred at the end of December. We were able to react very quickly and very flexibly to that in terms of looking at our product mix in our oil sands business and using our asset positions, our logistics, our tankage positions to actually mitigate the impact of that and maximize margin through that event.
It's a great part of the organization. Thanks for asking the question, Dennis. I don't think it gets enough attention sometimes because it's a key component of our integrated model and that margin capture that you see in the downstream, but also our margins we see in the upstream.
Dennis Fong (Equity Research Analyst)
Great. Thanks. Appreciate that color. If at all possible, I'd like to move in a slightly different direction. You've now commissioned and completed the PFT hot bitumen transfer pipeline, which now connects Fort Hills to your operating complex in the Base Plant and the base line. I was just hoping for some commentary, A, on we'll call it the increased flexibility that you have by connecting all these various assets. Secondarily, I believe the Base Plant has processed PFT barrels. I believe it was at the start of Fort Hills, but wouldn't mind understanding kind of again the potential flexibility as well as the upside that that connection could offer.
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Great. Thanks for that, Dennis. Actually, I'm gonna pass that question over to Peter Zebedee.
Peter Zebedee (EVP of Mining and Upgrading)
Thanks very much, Dennis. Indeed, you're correct. We have commissioned the PFT jump over line to put Fort Hills barrels over into the Base Plant upgrader. We have the flexibility to bring over up to 40,000 barrels per day of Fort Hills bitumen into the upgrader. We have utilized that within the last year, and that of course just provides additional flexibility for us on bitumen supply sources into the upgrader. I think that particular line in conjunction with the ICP line that we have between both Syncrude and the Base Plant offer us differentiated flexibility in the region to offset, you know, various unit maintenance activities and really extract them with the highest margin for the barrels that we're producing in the upstream.
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Yeah. Thanks, Peter. Maybe I'll just add to that. Like the flexibility that Peter's highlighting, you know, Fort Hills, Syncrude, Firebag, you know, we've got all those assets with connectivity into our Base Plant and into the Athabasca tank terminal. It's creating a tremendous amount of optionality for us to move bitumen around. In the case of Syncrude as well, we, it's bidirectional pipeline, and we can move sour gas oils up to Syncrude when we find ourselves an opportunity where we've got long hydrotreating in that asset. It's been a real win for Suncor, and we're looking for more and more opportunities to increase that flexibility.
Dennis Fong (Equity Research Analyst)
Fantastic. Appreciate that. I'll turn it back.
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Thanks, Dennis.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Greg Pardy with RBC Capital Markets.
Greg Pardy (Managing Director and Head of Global Energy Research)
Yeah, thanks. Thanks. Good morning, and thanks for the rundown. Wanted to stay maybe just on the operations side right now and two questions there. The first is, Kris, why is a 20% reduction in the contractor workforce? Like, how did you guys sort of land on that as being the right number? I think you've probably accomplished half of that already, and are you seeing benefits coming from it?
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Yes. Thanks very much, Greg. You know, 20% I wouldn't say is an arbitrary number. It's working in a very focused way to how low can we get that contractor workforce down while ensuring we're maintaining safe, reliable operations and getting the work done. Maybe I'll ask Peter to talk to it a bit. Peter's obviously been leading this because it's been primarily in our mining upgrading business, which is really the part of the business that has the largest amount of contract workforce. Greg or Peter.
Peter Zebedee (EVP of Mining and Upgrading)
No, I would say maybe a couple of things, Greg. First was ensuring that we had the transparency built out across the assets to understand, you know, how many contractors were coming through the gate each and every day. As you can imagine with these mega sites, the scale is quite significant. We had to get our arms around the numbers. The second was implementing a robust set of controls and work processes on ensuring that we're really scrutinizing the release of work to contractors and ensuring that we're maximizing the capacity that we have within our own Suncor workforce, first and foremost.
We're really looking to also build some additional tools to provide to our operators, to provide them with sufficient information to ensure that we're sequencing maintenance activities, in particular, in the most cost-efficient way.
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Yeah. Thanks, Peter. Greg, I'd add to that as well. You know, we are making good progress, as you just mentioned. We're on track. We've got high confidence in driving those reductions. The thing I'd add to it, these reductions do two things in our mind. One, obviously, it reduces cost, and increases efficiency. Secondly, and as importantly, it actually improves safety, because there's less people in the field. We're getting both the benefits from these reductions.
Greg Pardy (Managing Director and Head of Global Energy Research)
Okay, terrific. Just really the second question comes back to the upstream. As you've maybe had a relook under all the rocks in the upstream, where do you see most of the low-hanging fruit as it relate to either output increases or, you know, or cost reductions aside from safety? I'm just wondering, is there more to come from MacKay? Is there more to come from Firebag and so forth? Where do you see the easy wins that maybe you can achieve in 2023?
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Our focus in 2023 is in the upstream, and particularly in the Oil Sands basin. It's continuing to drive this leveraging the scale around regionalization. The contractor reduction is a great example of that because it's the ability to leverage across the entire asset base and optimize and drive down the contractor workforce as an example. We're continuing to work on that regionalization strategy around services, around materials and supplies. The other piece is, and Peter was talking about earlier in his answer on the question around Fort Hills, is we're seeing this opportunity to continue to drive this integration between the assets because it increases reliability in how we manage even things like maintenance events.
As we're managing, for instance, maintenance in Syncrude, we now have the added benefit that we look at, well, if certain things are down for maintenance, it doesn't mean necessarily we're slowing the mine down. We can now move that bitumen and bring that bitumen in, into the Base Plant. We're gonna be focusing on more and more opportunities like that. I've been pleased with what I've been seeing with the assets. An example would be Firebag as well. You know, we hit a Q4 production record, so we're seeing increased reliability across the assets. Really our big focus is in the mine upgrading space that Peter's leading because there's a lot of opportunity, both on how we're managing cost in the business, as well as how we're optimizing production amongst the assets.
Greg Pardy (Managing Director and Head of Global Energy Research)
Thanks very much.
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Thanks, Greg.
Peter Zebedee (EVP of Mining and Upgrading)
Thank you.
Greg Pardy (Managing Director and Head of Global Energy Research)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from the line of Doug Leggate with Bank of America.
Doug Leggate (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
Oh, thanks. Good morning, everyone. Guys, I wonder if I could address the dividend. I know you've announced it last quarter, but with the, you know, the visibility you have today, one of the key things behind the strategy laid out a few years ago was to drop the breakeven. With all the moving parts that we've seen with Fort Hills and, you know, the kind of reset you've had, where do you think that breakeven progress sits today relative to what you laid out? I guess what I'm asking is, what's the breakeven to cover your dividend today? What's the headroom for additional dividend increases?
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Okay.
Peter Zebedee (EVP of Mining and Upgrading)
Go ahead, I'll stay. Yeah.
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
I'll take that one, Kris. Thanks for the question, Doug. Obviously, lots of moving parts here. The dividend has been going up, and as we progress improvements in our operations. I would say as we sit and look at it today, our corporate breakeven for sustaining capital and dividend is really mid $40 WTI. It's higher than obviously we had targeted.It is competitive amongst our integrated peers. As we work through our performance improvement plan to drive down costs and improve reliability and production over the long term, we are focused on driving that back down to our longer-term target of the mid $30. The biggest factor in that really, and the opportunity is the mine improvement plan, particularly at Fort Hills.
I would say that as we work through those near-term mine constraints and get into the north pit, the largest and final pit, we would expect to see a significant improvement in Fort Hills. That'll help us drive down the overall corporate breakeven.
Doug Leggate (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
Okay. I will continue to watch it. I guess my follow-up is, you know, buried in the, in the numbers, I guess there's a comment about the increase in decommissioning restoration provision. I'm just wondering if you can walk us through what the back story is there, how this has come about, whether we should expect that, you know, whether this is the end of the story, or we should expect that to continue to evolve. I'll leave it there. Thanks.
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Yeah. Thanks, Doug. I mean, you've heard us talk about the challenges of water return and remediation, which is an industry-wide challenge. Anybody with mines up north has this. It's certainly one that we'll be talking about, that we'll be in conversation, discussions with the two levels of government in Canada and also the First Nations, to resolve. I just remind everybody, we're the only industry in the world that is not allowed to return any treated water back to the river, and that would include all the rainfall that falls on our sites. Everybody in the industry is actually focused on resolving this. Obviously, we have a larger volume than anybody else because we've been at it for far longer than everybody else.
As we go through our normal process each year, we update our estimates to manage that water return challenge. Specifically this year, that would include incorporating higher rates of inflation on future costs of stay-in-shape, you know, for up to 70+ years into the future. That really is the driver behind the increased ARO liability that you see in the financial statements. Everybody in the industry has it, and that's why we're all so focused on resolving that water return challenge with governments and our peers.
Doug Leggate (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
Just to be clear, Alister, for clarification, what's the cash out, the cadence of the cash out for that incremental, that, you know, liability?
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Yeah, most of that, Doug, would come in, you know, after a mine closure and ranges from sort of late 2030s to 2070, 2080.
Doug Leggate (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
It's very long-dated. Got it. Thank you so much.
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Very long-dated. It's very long-dated, and there's no near-term increase to cash outflow.
Doug Leggate (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)
That's what I was trying to get to. Thanks so much, Alister. That's great. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Neil Mehta with Goldman Sachs.
Neil Mehta (Managing Director)
Good morning, team. I'd like to kick off here on capital returns. As you said, last couple of years you've been aggressive in repurchasing shares and reset the dividend. Just as you look at 2023, can you give us a sense of how much capital can be returned to shareholders? With commodity prices coming off a little bit, what's your confidence interval about making that pivot to 75% from 50% of cash back?
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Thanks for the question, Neil. Our view is that, you know, we're still in a constructive pricing environment. Obviously, not going to be what we saw in terms of the records of 2022. We feel that what we see right now in the pricing environment, you know, assuming it continues to hold through the balance of the year and our own operational plans, our intent is to pivot to the 75/25 here towards the end of Q-2, sorry, end of Q-1. As we're starting to see the debt start to get even closer to those long-term targets that we'd set out quite a while ago.
As you know, we've made a lot of progress on those debt targets relative to where we thought they would have been, 18 months ago. Right now our plan is to continue to move to that 75/25 in that timeframe, unless something radically changes in the business environment.
Neil Mehta (Managing Director)
Thanks for that. The follow-up is around the safety journey that you're on. Maybe you could spend some time, Kris, talking about your perspective on that. You know, how can we as an investment community evaluate where you are in that movement back towards where you wanna be? Any comments around Commerce City as it relates to that as well.
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Great. Thanks, Neil. I would say I've been very pleased with how the organization's responded to safety, particularly, you know, since I've taken on the interim CEO role. The entire operations organization, led by the senior operating team, a number of them are sitting here with me on this call today. We put in place a very defined and specific and focused safety improvement plan, one that is reinvigorating and driving our focus on our Operational Excellence Management System and operational risk management. That's engaging with our front line. We are rolling out Human and Organizational Performance principles. We've been engaging with the organization on those actively over the last number of months.
As well as, you know, Peter's talked about in the past some of the safety technology investments we're making around the specific risk areas that we saw in the last two years that have led to tragic fatality incidents. I'm encouraged by what I've seen over the last six months. I always say, you know, this is a journey and you don't measure this thing in days and months.
What I would say is, since I've taken the interim CEO role, I've been pleased with the direction I've seen in safety performance, both in personal safety and process safety. We've seen a reduction in the number of incidents over that period of time. Again, this focus has to continue. It has to, it's a daily focus for this organization.
You know, for investors, I mean, how you measure that obviously is in results at the end of the day. What I can assure you and all our investors is that the focus of this operating team is squarely on safety first in this organization. You know, let me talk about Commerce City. I think it's a great question you just asked, Neil, about Commerce City in the aspect of safety. We had an extreme weather incident in December. Everyone saw the impact of the entire refining industry during that period of time. Our own facility was significantly impacted by that extreme weather. We had a number of equipment failures and some lost containments.
The team, the operating team down there took the measure to put that facility in safe mode and take the right steps to safe that facility and ensure that we have it in a state and condition that we can operate it safely going forward. I've been incredibly pleased and proud of the work that the team has done down there in terms of the full inspection and repair of the facility. We've already started the progressive restart of the facility and are on track with where we expect to be. To me, that's an example. While no one likes to see incidents like that, it's an example of how an organization responds when it comes to safely managing your assets.
Neil Mehta (Managing Director)
Thanks, Kris.
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Great. Thanks, Neil.
Neil Mehta (Managing Director)
Thank you.
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question comes from the line of Menno Hulshof with TD Securities.
Menno Hulshof (Managing Director of Institutional Equity Research)
Thanks, good morning, everyone. I'll start with the Base Mine Extension since it ties into some of the other questions that were asked previously. My understanding is that a decision on sanctioning the extension to address mine depletion versus leaning more on in-situ production to keep the upgraders full is still expected by 2025. Maybe you could just give us your latest thoughts on the various options and what you consider most likely at this stage.
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Thanks, Menno. Yeah, as you point out, I mean, our base mine end of mine life is in the mid-2030. We're working through various options for replacement of that bitumen supply. Our focus is primarily keeping those upgraders full. We do have a number of options.
You just outlined a couple of them in your question. We do have the Base Mine Extension application in place. We're continuing with that application, but it is not our only alternative or option. We do have the option, which we're also progressing around further in-situ development. Just east of the of our Base Plant, contiguous to our current mine operations is both our Lewis lease as well as Firebag, which also has significant resource left.
Too early to call in terms of which horse is in the lead race, but those options are both being worked very hard. The other piece I'd mention as well is kind of back to early on the call, we talked about the connectivity amongst the operations and our ability to bring bitumen into the upgrader from Fort Hills now. It's 60,000 barrels a day or, sorry, 40,000 barrels a day of capacity that can be further increased, and as well, we can bring more Firebag in.
We have lots of optionality in terms of bitumen supply in the upgrader. The team's working hard on all of those options. It's all about what's gonna be the most economic and risk-based option that we're going to supply that upgrader.
I expect over the next 24 months, we're gonna start, landing on which option is going to be the lead horse.
Menno Hulshof (Managing Director of Institutional Equity Research)
Terrific. Maybe I'll just pivot to the macro with a question on diesel. We've obviously seen cracks come down quite a bit over the last several weeks. What is your read on this pullback? What are your expectations for Canadian diesel cracks over the midterm? Maybe you could just remind us of how much flex you have on dialing the product slate up and down for distillates across your four refineries.
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Sure. Remember too as well, Menno, when we think about diesel, we think about it in two aspects as well. There's our refining business, which we are tooled. We're more a 2-1-1. We're not a 3-2-1 refining network, which is great. It does give us some flexibility to tool up a bit more to diesel, but also recall too, in terms of synthetic crude oil and our diesel make up in our Oil Sands business. Certainly, we're levered to the side of distillate rather than gasoline across the whole system. You know, the view on diesel, I mean, certainly, not expecting that we're gonna see the extraordinary cracking margins that we saw in 2022, but our expectation is we're still gonna see a very robust distillate market.
We're still seeing good demand on distillate, even though it pulled back slightly here recently. Still, I think the structural foundation for strong distillate cracks is still there. That's the expectation that we're gonna see through the balance of the year. If you just look at global inventories and demand. I think gasoline, you know, gasoline's actually strengthened a little bit. It really came off at the end of Q4. Not a surprise given the seasonality of that, but gasoline, we think the cracking margin should be at around historical norms. You know, I don't see a big pullback on gasoline.
The story, I think in 2023 is gonna continue to be distillate, and it's going to still be very supportive of both the downstream business as well as our diesel make out of oil sands.
Menno Hulshof (Managing Director of Institutional Equity Research)
Thanks, Kris. I'll turn it back.
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Great. Thanks, Menno.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Roger Read with Wells Fargo.
Roger Read (Senior Energy Analyst)
Yeah, thank you. Good morning. Guess, maybe just dig in a little bit here on a operational question, looking at, two things in the Oil Sands, kind of your thoughts on what we should expect in terms of royalties and then, what you are looking at in the way of sort of cash OpEx. I know higher
Fuel prices have an impact. Just what are some of the thoughts in terms of cash operating costs, underlying inflation and what you can do to push back against that?
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Sure. Thanks, Roger. You know, on royalties, you know, I think we're gonna continue to see, you know, royalties were in post-payout in some of the assets, but pre-payout in others. Expect royalties is gonna be less than 23 versus 22, just because of where we're gonna see commodity price. I expect we're still going to have a healthy royalty remittance back to the province. On the cash operating costs, I mean, we're obviously incredibly focused on that. When I was at our Investor Day, we talked about the cash operating costs and the impacts both of where we're at structurally with our mine plans in 2023.
Both the mine improvement plan in Fort Hills as well as, where we're at in Syncrude, just in its mine cycle in 2023, which is adding some additional costs, which we're gonna be working through this year and expect that to go in the right direction as we head into next year. As well, we've been seeing inflation, not in any way that we haven't expected it.
The team's been doing a lot of work, kind of go back to what we talked about earlier in terms of the contractor reductions. Doing a lot of work to, first of all, offset that inflation wherever we can and drive the costs further down. We set the guidance range for 2023 and communicated that at the Investor Day.
We're focused on delivering those costs within that guidance range or below right now. I think, you know, one of the things on inflation, certainly we saw extreme inflation into the back half of last year. Seeing some of it come in. We've seen it continue into 2023, but it's starting to mitigate a bit too. Hopefully we're gonna continue to see inflation sort of start to temper itself as we move into the balance of the year.
Roger Read (Senior Energy Analyst)
Can you quantify at all what part of that is related to kind of underlying fuel costs or what sort of, you know, what sort of offset you might get there?
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Yeah, I'd say the inflation, you know, where we're seeing inflation is, you know, on the labor side, contractors, and it's why it's one of the areas we've been incredibly focused on. It's that inflationary pressure is coming in wages and labor costs. We were seeing it in supplies and materials, but that's starting to come off a bit. I've seen that steel prices inflation starting to really cool on steel. In terms of fuel, you know, I mean, look at commodity costs. I mean, certainly, it's been helpful where we've seen nat gas prices trend here. They're a lot lower than what our expectation would have been going into this year.
Just the, as you would know, just seeing what's going on with global, with just temperatures, a warm winter and supply, an oversupply of natural gas in North America. You know, that's been a nice surprise for our business and it'll be a bit of a tailwind on the cost side.
Roger Read (Senior Energy Analyst)
Okay. The unrelated follow-up, is we're all well aware you remain the interim CEO. Any updates on the timing for removing that tag?
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Yeah, thanks. No, I'm not in a position to make an announcement on this call. I'll say what I said before. The board is going through a very diligent process, ensuring that they make the decision that's going to take this company forward. I expect the decision is gonna be very soon. It's been communicated in the past that that decision is expected in mid-February. I mean, we're sitting here on 15th February so I expect the decision and the announcement will be coming fairly soon.
Roger Read (Senior Energy Analyst)
Yeah, I appreciate that. I'm not real good at math, but it struck me the fifteenth was mid-February as well.
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Thanks.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John Royall with J.P. Morgan.
John Royall (Executive Director)
Hey, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just to follow up on Neil's first question on capital allocation, I just wanted to make sure I understand. You're at about CAD 13.5 billion of net debt today. Are you talking about possibly going to the 75% tier before you hit the CAD 12 billion level? Is there an expectation that you'll be delevering by CAD 1.5 billion in 1Q? If it's the latter, maybe you can go through some of those drivers of deleverage. I know you're closing the wind and solar assets, you should have the stake increase in Fort Hills going the other way. Just anything on those drivers. Thanks.
Alister Cowan (CFO)
John, I'll take that one. I said before that I'm gonna look through any FX impacts to get to the CAD 12 billion. Included in the CAD 13.4 billion is about CAD 750 million of FX impacts from a weaker Canadian dollar compared to when we set the targets. You know, I would take that off, and we would still expect to be close to the CAD 12 billion or close enough to the CAD 12 billion ex FX by the end of Q1. There's some noise around, as you mentioned, the timing of closing Fort Hills. We had assumed it would be in the beginning of Q2 and match up with the sale of the UK assets in that quarter. There'll be some noise around that, obviously, to close Fort Hills earlier.
We expect to move the beginning of Q2 to 75%, 25%.
John Royall (Executive Director)
Okay, thanks. That's helpful. Then, maybe you could talk about the optimization you guys are doing in retail and specifically, the things you're doing around mix for operated versus non-operated stores. Just a little bit of color there would be helpful.
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Sure. Thanks, John. So what we're doing with our, the retail business and outlined in Investor Day, we're optimizing our national network. It is a mix of controlled and non-controlled. It's about 50/50, just for round numbers. What we're doing is we're focusing our investment on high volume, high value sites in core markets.
When we put those types of investments in place, we've seen terrific results within the network. While at the same time, we're looking to optimize and rationalize those pieces of the network that are less core. So that will be rationalizing non-performing sites as well as moving sites that are in non-core markets out of controlled and into the non-controlled channel as well. So that'll allow us to focus our controlled network on those, on those core markets and those high value, high volume sites.
That plan is now underway. It's a five year plan that we laid out when we talked about it in Investor Day, and the team is focused on delivering it.
John Royall (Executive Director)
Okay. Thank you.
Kris Smith (Interim President and CEO)
Great. Thanks.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. I'll now hand the call back over to Vice President of Investor Relations, Troy Little, for any closing remarks.
Troy Little (VP of Investor Relations)
Thank you, operator, and thank you to everyone for joining us today. Please don't hesitate to contact us should you have any questions. With that operator, you can end the call.
Operator (participant)
Thank you for participating. This concludes today's program, and you may now disconnect.