with chemicals. 2021 was an incredible year for this key part of our business and I just can't say enough about how pleased I am with the performance it delivered, making the most of capturing a very favorable market environment. The fourth quarter was another solid quarter. Earnings in the fourth quarter were $64 million supported by continued strong production, reliability and margins. Fourth quarter earnings were down $57 million versus the third quarter which I will- will remind you was the highest quarterly earnings in over 30 years. This reduction was driven largely by expected softening of polyethylene margins. And while margins did soften somewhat in the quarter, they still remained quite strong and that sets the chemical business up well for a strong 2022. Four year chemical earnings were $361 million, $74 million higher than the previous full year record of $287 million, set in 2015. An outstanding year for our chemicals business, which continues to be a differentiator for us. The integrated nature of our business supports a long history of profitability, even in a year like 2020. And we expect this to continue even as we see polyethylene prices normalizing somewhat. And just before wrapping up, I wanted to highlight a couple of other important items of note. First, we announced our plans to market our interest in XTO Energy Canada a few weeks ago, which of- as you will recall is our unconventional business. We have been quite open recently about where this business fits into our longer term upstream strategy and our decision to market the assets is fully consistent with this. To be clear though, no decision has been made to sell these assets. But in our view, we felt it was appropriate to test the market in the event there is an opportunity to generate increased value through a potential sales transaction. I also wanted to highlight the announcements we made recently on Imperial's plans for further reductions in greenhouse gas emissions intensity over the next decade to help support Canada's net zero goals. Imperial has set a 2030 goal to reduce scope one and scope two greenhouse gas emissions intensity of our operated oil sands facilities by 30%, compared with 2016 levels. This target builds on our previous 2023 commitment, which we are well on track to deliver. I'm quite proud of the progress we've made to date in reducing the intensity of our greenhouse gas emissions at our operated oil sands assets. And our recent announcement is another step in our journey to net zero at our operated oil sands assets by 2050. So in closing, another strong quarter which brings to a close a year of very strong results, both operationally and financially. As you have heard me say before, the decisions we have made and the work the organization has done over the past several quarters is allowing us to take maximum advantage of the prevailing market conditions. And this performance supports our ongoing commitment to drive increased shareholder value and our continued commitment to shareholder returns. As you heard Dan and I mention, in 2021 we returned nearly $3 billion to our shareholders via our reliable and growing dividend and share buybacks. And we are also excited to reinforce our commitments to sustainability, not only with our recent announced greenhouse gas intensity reduction target, but with our participation in the Pathways Initiative, an unprecedented industry alliance. Our long term focus on reducing our environmental footprint through investments in things like solvent technologies and carbon capture and storage underpin our confidence in meeting these goals. Looking forward to 2022, we continue to see support for commodity prices and fully expect to deliver another year of strong operational performance, underpinning our ability to take utmost advantage of the current market conditions. We will continue our focus on reduced emissions and sustainability, including our plans for renewable diesel at our Strathcona refinery. We will remain disciplined with respect to spending levels, both operating and capital. And we will also continue to return cash in excess of these needs to our shareholders. And finally, I'd like to thank all of you for your continued support. I hope you're as excited about 2022 as we are. Thank you and back to you, Dave. Okay. We're gonna move to the Q& A now. We did have a couple of, uh, questions pre-submitted which we'll get to first and then we'll go to the live Q&A line. So the two questions came from Phil Skolnick at Eight Capital. The first one, What are you and ExxonMobil looking for in order to make a decision on marketing the XTO assets? Would you consider selling it in pieces? Yeah, thanks for that question, Phil. And, and as, as you know, we, we announced earlier, um, in January our intention to market those assets jointly with, with ExxonMobil. Uh, and in fact we, we've progressed those activities now, have the data room open. Um, there, there is a lot of interest. And, you know, our, our decision around marketing was really driven by, um, the strategic work we have done over the last couple of years where we have prioritized our focus on, on certain assets in our portfolio. And, uh, and, and really prioritized our capital as well. And, and through that work, we, we have concluded that we have, uh, higher value opportunities, uh, with our, with our core mining, uh, assets. And as such, um, you know, you'll recall we took an- an impairment decision in, in late 2020, uh, for some of the unconventional assets that we had, um, not included in our development plans. So again, this is really, um, a continuation of, of that strategy. We have not made the decision to sell though. So we're gonna be looking at, um, you know, how do we create maximum value for, for us, for our shareholders? Um, prior to, uh, to putting the, the assets in the marketplace, we had received, uh, several unsolicited offers, uh, for, for those assets. Um, and we shouldn't be surprised by that. Um, you know, there's been a lot of consolidation that's occurring i- in the- in the Montney and Duvernay shale, uh, resource plays. And, uh, you know, so it's really the, the culmination of all that that, uh, that drove us to put those assets in the marketplace. And, uh, and, and we'll see what we get back. Um, we, it is a very large resource, uh, play. Um, you know, over 650,000 net acres. Um, and, and so from a, uh, you know, from a, a, a transaction structure, we, we are open to, uh, to selling it in pieces. Um, you know, we, we do know that there are some industry players that are primarily focused on the Montney. There's others that are primarily focused in the Duvernay. Um, there's some that are in both. Uh, so, you know, we, we are open to considering, uh, alternate, uh, structures for the transaction. Um, the key is gonna be what delivers the most value and, and how does that compare to our view of value, if we were continue to, uh, to retain