Good morning. My name is Chris, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the National Resource Partners LP Fourth Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Thank you, Tiffany Sammis, Manager of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to the Natural Resource Partners fourth quarter 2021 conference call. Today's call is being webcast, and a replay will be available on our website. Joining me today are Craig Nunez, President and Chief Operating Officer; Chris Zolas, Chief Financial Officer; and Kevin Craig, Executive Vice President. Some of our comments today may include forward-looking statements reflecting NRP's views about future events. These matters involve risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to materially differ from our forward-looking statements. These risks are discussed in NRP's Form 10-K and other Securities and Exchange Commission filings. We undertake no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statements for any reason. Our comments today also include non-GAAP financial measures. Additional details and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in our fourth quarter press release, which can be found on our website. I would like to remind everyone that we do not intend to discuss the operations or outlook for any particular coal lessee or detailed market fundamentals. In addition, I refer you to general resources public disclosures and commentary for specific questions regarding our Soda Ash business segment. Now I would like to turn the call over to Craig Nunez, our President and Chief Operating Officer.

Thank you, Tiffany. Good morning, all. I am pleased to report that strong demand for metallurgical coal, thermal coal and soda ash in the fourth quarter of 2021, produced one of the best quarters in terms of free cash flow in the partnership's history. While COVID-19 remains a risk factor for the global economy, we expect to generate robust free cash flow in the months ahead and plan to continue using that cash to pay down debt, solidify our capital structure and pay common unit distributions. The fourth quarter also witnessed the closing of our first carbon sequestration transaction, for which, we received approximately $14 million in exchange for agreeing to sequester roughly 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide or CO2 in our West Virginia forest land. We followed that with a second sequestration transaction announced earlier this quarter, which involves the underground storage of CO2. We granted Denbury the right to develop a sequestration project on approximately 75,000 acres of subsurface forest space, we control in Southwest at Alabama, which Denbury believes has the potential to be a world-class storage facility with over 300 million metric tons of capacity. We expect this project, if developed, to be the first of what will potentially be numerous subsurface sequestration projects conducted on the approximately 3.5 million acres, where we own the rights to sequester CO2 across the United States. In addition to CO2 sequestration, we continue working to identify opportunities on our large acreage footprint to realize value from the generation of electricity using geothermal, solar and wind energy. As with our CO2 sequestration activities and consistent with our royalty business model, we anticipate little to no capital investment will be required of NRP related to these opportunities. While it's difficult to predict the timing and likelihood of cash flows…

Thank you, Craig, and good morning, everyone. During the fourth quarter, we generated $55 million of operating cash flow and $56 million of net income. Moving to our business segment results. I'd like to begin by noting that we have renamed our coal royalty and other segment to Mineral Rights. To better reflect our extensive portfolio of mineral ownership across the United States as well as our focus on leveraging our asset footprint to participate in the transitional energy economy, as Craig discussed earlier. There have been no change to the assets that make up this business segment, only a change to the name. During the fourth quarter of 2021, our Mineral Rights segment generated $68 million of operating cash flow and $60 million of net income. Fourth quarter 2021 segment free cash flow net income improved $34 million and $38 million, respectively, compared to the prior year quarter primarily as a result of stronger demand and pricing from metallurgical coal and our forest carbon sequestration transaction. Metallurgical coal made up approximately 55% of our total coal royalty sales volumes and approximately 75% of our coal royalty revenue during the fourth quarter of 2021. Moving to our Soda Ash business segment. Net income in the fourth quarter of 2021 improved $5 million as compared to the previous year quarter, primarily due to increased demand for soda ash from the lows caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Free cash flow in the fourth quarter of 2021 improved $7 million as compared to the prior year quarter as a result of Sisecam Wyoming's decision to reinstate the regularly quarterly -- the regular quarterly distribution in November of 2021. Our Corporate and Financing segment costs increased $2 million in the fourth quarter of 2021 as compared to the prior year quarter primarily due to…

Thank you, and thank you, everyone, for participating in our call today, and thank you for your continued support of NRP. Have a great day.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call and webcast. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.