“Beginning in 2024, we will be aligning both the announcement timing and subsequent payment of our VROC with our ordinary dividend.”

In context

“which included $360 million for longer cycle projects. And through the end of the third quarter, we have now funded $875 million for Port Arthur LNG, out of our planned $1.1 billion for the year. Regarding returns of capital, we delivered $2.6 billion to shareholders in the third quarter. This was via $1.3 billion in share buybacks and $1.3 billion in ordinary dividends and VROC payments. And today, as Ryan said, we announced an increase to our organic dividend of 14% to $0.58 per share. We ended the quarter with cash and short-term investments of $9.7 billion, which included proceeds from the $2.7 billion of long-term debt that we issued to fund the Surmont acquisition, which closed in early October. Before shifting to guidance, I do want to take a quick moment to update about our VROC. Beginning in 2024, we will be aligning both the announcement timing and subsequent payment of our VROC with our ordinary dividend. Therefore, you can expect us to provide details on our first quarter VROC payment on the fourth quarter call in February. Now turning to guidance, which now reflects additional 50% of Surmont starting in early October, we forecast fourth quarter production to be in a range of 1.86 million to 1.9 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. Full year production guidance is now roughly 1.82 million barrels of oil equivalent today. Now to put this production guidance in the context, we expect underlying growth for both the fourth quarter and the full year to be roughly 4% year-over-year, which includes Lower 48 production growth of roughly 7%. And this is very consistent with our full year guidance and our long-term plan we laid out at our Analyst and Investor Meeting. For APLNG, we expect dis”