You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: This is Brandon Day, Whiting's investor relations director.
Also, available to answer questions during the Q&A session will be our COO, Chip Rimer.
Those include risks relating to commodity prices, competition, technology, environmental and regulatory compliance, midstream availability and others described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are incorporated by reference.
I want to keep all this in perspective in light of what's happening in the world stage.
Above all else, we hope peace is restored as quickly as possible.
You can refer to our 10-K we filed yesterday and our news release for detailed information, as well as reconciliations to non-GAAP measures.
2021 was a strong year.
We exited the year with some momentum and expect to see another good year in 2022.
We exceeded our guidance numbers.
We paid off the balance of our revolver.
We added inventory in our core areas, and we, most recently, took the first step toward a capital return plan by initiating our first-ever regular dividend.
While we were assisted by a rising commodity price environment, our team did a great job executing our 2021 program, as well as the initiatives we set out at the beginning of the year.
Once Jimmy concludes, I want to talk about our 2022 program, our return of capital approach for 2022 and to answer some questions that arose from our last news release.
And I echo your thoughts on -- as our thoughts and prayers go out to Ukrainian people on news that we're all watching here and hope that peace is resolved quickly.
Well, I hate to spot off a bunch of numbers.
I know you all read in our filings already.
I do want to highlight a few things, a few results that are really striking.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, we had net income on a GAAP basis of $292 million or $7.34 per diluted share as compared to $198 million or $5 per share in the previous quarter.
Adjusting for certain items, but primarily the mark-to-market of our hedging transactions, we had adjusted net income of $168 million or $4.23 per diluted share in the fourth quarter as compared to $142 million or $3.57 per share for the previous quarter.
Adjusted EBITDAX was $226 million compared to $201 million in the previous quarter.
The increase is primarily due to the better commodity prices and a slight uptick in our oil production quarter-over-quarter.
Our production on a barrels of oil equivalent basis remain relatively flat quarter-over-quarter, averaging 92,800 BOE per day compared to a third quarter production of 92,100 BOE per day.
Oil production for the fourth quarter averaged 52,900 barrels of oil per day, which is up slightly from 51,800 barrels of oil in the third quarter.
Oil differentials were considerably higher in the fourth quarter as overall basin production levels remain well within total takeaway capacity.
As we move into 2022, our term commitment levels have decreased, resulting in more exposure to spot value premiums that we're seeing now.
Our natural gas prices benefited in 2021 from a premium at our primary pricing point, the Ventura point as compared to Henry Hub.
And NGL prices continued to be strong in the fourth quarter at an average percentage of WTI oil of around 37%.
Just for context, this compares to less than 20% that we were experiencing in the same quarter last year.
As noted last quarter, the majority of our gathering and processing agreements are structured as fixed fee contracts, and therefore, receive a more pronounced benefit to our net realized price at current residue gas and NGL benchmark pricing.
The company invested capex of about $66 million during the fourth quarter to bring 16 gross, 12 net wells on to production and we drilled 17 gross, 10.4 net operated wells.
We ended the quarter with 34 gross, 20.2 net drilled and uncompleted wells.
We currently have two rigs running and one completion crew.
Both of those drilling rigs are in the Sanish Field and our completion crews working in the Cassandra area.
Lease operating expense was $62 million for -- or $7.31 per BOE for the fourth quarter of '21.
Note that LOE continues to be impacted by expensed workovers that we've talked about previously.
Our cash G&A expenses were $12 million for the fourth quarter and for the year totaled about $39 million, averaging right around $1.16 per BOE for 2021.
We did see a dramatic increase year-over-year with the estimated total proved reserves totaling 326 million BOEs with a pre-tax PV10 value of $4.4 billion at year-end compared to 260 million BOE and $1.2 billion at the year-end 2020.
Pricing under SEC rules increased by approximately $27 per barrel to $66.56 per barrel at December 31, 2021, compared to December 31, 2020.
Gas increased to $3.60 per MMBtu compared to $1.99 for the same two periods.
Obviously, these price changes were the biggest factor in the year-over-year changes, but we also added 20.3 million BOE through the drill bit and 16 million BOE with acquisitions, which more than offset the decrease from selling our Colorado assets.
Lastly, I'll point out that our proved developed properties accounted for roughly 80% of our total proved reserves with approximately $3.6 billion in value.
It's worth noting that this value is at SEC pricing of around $67 per barrel of oil as compared to spot prices today.
With that, I'll turn this back over to Lynn and talk a little bit about where we're headed in 2022.
There were a lot of numbers here.
So I appreciate that.
Divesting of our Colorado properties, combined with adding meaningful inventory through our acquisition work, we'll pay great dividends in future years, and we should really start to see the benefits accruing at the end of 2022 and moving into 2023 with our development plan.
The board and management understand the importance of returning capital to shareholders.
We have had much engagement throughout the last year by our board, and we are excited to lay out our plans as we go through the year.
As such, the board approved a quarterly dividend of $0.25 per share that will be paid beginning in March, which was only the first step of our capital return program.
Our board wants to be very thoughtful and measured in developing a plan.
To that end, we have had multiple discussions of stock buybacks and fixed and variable dividends.
And I am completely comfortable in saying our board of directors is going in this direction, and we would expect to lay out additional information that would place the company in the fairway of what we are seeing from returning capital from our peers.
When we look out over the next four years and consider a $70 price environment for WTI crude, we see our company generating free cash flow in an amount approximately the same as our current market cap.
I know we live in a world of instant gratification.
But again, I will state that our board of directors is aligned with our shareholders, and we will methodically develop and return a capital plan that should please our shareholders.
And I want to shift and outline how we thought about our 2022 capital plan and production profile.
Looking ahead, we will have a slightly higher activity level, we will have larger working interest in the wells drilled and completed in our Sanish Field due to the acquisitions.
We anticipate an increased level of non-operated activity, and we have built in inflationary factors that we are currently experiencing and anticipate throughout the year.
Our supply chain team has done a great job of locking many of the big-ticket items for the first half of 2022.
However, we are less protected in the back half of the year.
We estimate the inflationary pressure to the program to be in the low double-digit percentages, but the high end of our guidance has contingency for higher inflation should that become an issue.
Turning to our production profile.
We have shifted some production from the first half of the year and into the second half due to the drilling and completion activities on a five well pad mentioned in our previous release.
We had the rig down on the pad in January, and we'll be moving back in, in March.
This delay, combined with our current activity in the Sanish Field, create somewhat of a hockey stick, moderating our overall '22 production but creating impressive growth as we exit the year and move into '23, which should benefit with a sharp increase in production.
In February, we announced the acquisition of non-operated assets in our Sanish Field.
We negotiate these transactions in the fall of '21 in a lower price environment, and we believe they add significant shareholder value.
We have been able to hedge production from these acquisitions at a much higher WTI pricing.
The acquired interest included wells currently on production, wells that have already been drilled and are awaiting completion in '22, as well as significant interest in wells scheduled on our '22 and '23 drilling programs.
This is a field that we understand very well, and I have a high confidence in the well economics, supporting our belief that these are highly accretive transactions with excellent risk-adjusted returns.
We're starting '22 in an incredibly strong financial position, and I expect to have attractive cash flow from operations during the year.
With our current hedges in place and using the $70 price for WTI and $4 for gas, we model over $900 million in EBITDA, resulting in over $500 million of adjusted free cash flow, which demonstrates that we can continue to grow our return to capital program while also continuing to pursue acquisition opportunities that will compete with our current profile.
By investing in Whiting, we think shareholders can really have it all.

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q4 adjusted non-gaap earnings per share $4.23.
q4 gaap earnings per share $7.34.

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