Efforts to streamline operations have helped Suncor Energy Inc. hit its debt target, triggering a commitment to pay out 100 per cent of excess funds to shareholders.
The oil and gas giant has been working to make efficiency improvements across its sprawling network as it shifts focus to incremental gains over pricey expansion projects.
The efforts yielded upstream production of 829,000 barrels per day to mark its best third quarter ever, its highest ever refining throughput of 488,000 barrels per day and highest ever refined sales at 612,000 barrels per day.
"This is now back to back to back quarterly records," said chief executive Rich Kruger on an earnings call Wednesday.
Suncor's efforts to ease bottlenecks and cost improvements include everything from new maintenance techniques to its shift to bigger, autonomous trucks. They include spending $1 million to increase its base plant capacity to 100,000 barrels a day from 65,000, and spending $500,000 to increase Firebag production by between 6,000 and 10,000 barrels a day, with both creating upwards of $100 million of additional free funds flow per year, said Kruger.
The efforts also include everything down to the material in the totes it uses to receive additives in, said Dave Oldreive, executive vice-president of downstream.
"It sounds like a small thing. It's worth $50,000 a year, not a big deal in the big scheme of things, but you add those up, we get 15,000 people in this company doing that, we're going to continue to drive improvements."
The higher production helped it earn $2.02 billion in its third quarter, up from $1.54 billion a year earlier.
It also helped Suncor reduce its debt by more than $1.4 billion in the quarter to achieve its net debt target of $8 billion ahead of many external forecasts, the company said. Hitting that triggered its commitment to pay out 100 per cent of excess funds to shareholders, up from 50 per cent at the start of the year.
Suncor returned $1.5 billion to shareholders in the quarter through share buybacks and dividends, while it boosted its dividend by five per cent to 57 cents per share.
The company is also tracking above the high end of its guidance on several measures so far in the fourth quarter, said Kruger, while the challenge next year will be to keep the improvements coming.
"What will be very key for us in 2025 too is holding the gains of 2024. We've made a lot of progress on cost, discipline, asset reliability and things. We're trying to be sure whether we institutionalize those and don't slip back at all."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2024.
Companies in this story: (TSX:SU)
Ian Bickis, The Canadian Press
