Welcome to the ConocoPhillips Market Update. My name is Liz, and I will be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. During the question-and-answer session, if you have a question, please press star one one on your touch-tone phone. I will now turn the call over to Phil Gresh, Vice President, Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.
Thank you, Liz, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our market update call to discuss this morning's announced transaction between ConocoPhillips and Marathon Oil Corporation, as well as an update to the company's distribution plans. On the call today, we have several members of the ConocoPhillips leadership team, including Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO, Bill Bullock, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Andy O'Brien, Senior Vice President, Strategy, Commercial, Sustainability, and Technology, and Nick Olds, Executive Vice President of Lower 48. We have a slide presentation posted on our website that we will be walking through on today's call. A couple of important administrative reminders: we use some non-GAAP terms this morning, and reconciliations to the nearest GAAP measures are included in today's release and on our website.
Also, please note that we will make some forward-looking statements based on current expectations, as well as statements about the proposed transaction between ConocoPhillips and Marathon. A description of the risks associated with forward-looking statements and other important information about the proposed transaction can be found in the joint press release and on slides two through four of the presentation. Finally, as a reminder, we'll be taking questions at the end of the prepared remarks, and we'll take one question per caller. Now I'll turn it over to Ryan.
Thanks, Phil, and thank you to everyone for joining our market update call to discuss ConocoPhillips' acquisition of Marathon Oil Corporation. Now, logistics dictated that we host this call in person from New York this morning, and Lee felt strongly he wanted to be in Houston with his team and the Marathon Oil employees. Otherwise, he would be joining us on the call this morning. I want to start off by saying that the acquisition of Marathon is a perfect fit for ConocoPhillips under Lee's leadership. Marathon has demonstrated many of the same values and priorities around safety, strong operational performance, and a commitment to ESG leadership and a CFO-based return on capital framework where shareholders come first. Marathon has a high-quality asset base with adjacencies to our own assets that will lead to a straightforward integration and meaningful synergies.
Turning to slide six, I'd like to start by covering some key highlights. First, this is an all-stock transaction with an enterprise value of $22.5 billion, inclusive of $5.4 billion of net debt. ConocoPhillips will be issuing roughly 144 million shares in connection with the transaction. We expect the transaction to close in the fourth quarter of 2024. From a financial perspective, the acquisition will immediately be accretive to earnings, cash flow, and return on capital per share. We expect to achieve at least a $500 million synergy run rate within the first full year following the closing of the transaction. Importantly, we see this transaction lowering our total company free cash flow breakeven, which unlocks additional return on capital to our shareholders. Along with this transaction, we are providing several shareholder distribution updates.
First, we have announced our intent to increase our ordinary base dividend by 34% starting in the fourth quarter. This is independent of the transaction. Second, upon closing the transaction and assuming recent commodity prices, we will increase our annual share buyback run rate to over $7 billion from over $5 billion today. And third, looking out further, we plan to buy back at least $20 billion in shares in the first three years post-close. That will allow us to retire the equivalent amount of newly issued equity in two to three years. Moving to slide seven, I wanted to frame up how this transaction fits within our disciplined M&A framework that you are all very familiar with. As a reminder, our three key tenets are that an acquisition must meet our framework, it must make our plan better, and we have to be able to make the assets better.
Marathon clearly meets all three criteria. In terms of our framework, Marathon's core Lower 48 assets are competitive within our portfolio, adding more than 2 billion bbl of resource with an average point forward cost of supply below $30 WTI. Second, as I already mentioned, the transaction makes our plan better as it's immediately accretive to earnings, cash flow, and return on capital per share. And third, we have clear line of sight to making the assets better through a combination of synergies, differential technology, and increased scale. Bottom line, Marathon fits very well within our current operations, and we see a number of opportunities to unlock value from the combined portfolio. Next, I'm going to turn the call over to Andy to walk through some of those opportunities in more detail.
Thanks, Ryan. So moving to slide eight, I want to start by talking about how Marathon's core Lower 48 assets line up very well with our portfolio, which you can clearly see on the slide. Starting in Eagle Ford, this transaction will further enhance our premier position in the heart of the play, increasing our production to nearly 400,000 bbl per day and adding roughly 1,000 new primary locations to our inventory. We also see significant upside potential from refracs. We've been implementing new refrac techniques across our existing Eagle Ford position that's expanded our refrac inventory at cost of supply to compete with our tier one opportunities. We will be doing the same on the Marathon acreage. In fact, based on our detailed analysis, we believe that Marathon has over 1,000 refrac locations in its Eagle Ford acreage. All totaled, we see over a decade of runway in the Eagle Ford.
In the Bakken, our pro forma production will double to over 200,000 bbl per day. We really like the Bakken as an all-weighted play that has the lowest reinvestment rate within our unconventional portfolio. Bakken will drive solid free cash flow generation with a combined drilling inventory of over 10 years. On a standalone basis, both companies' Bakken programs are very similar in terms of drilling rigs and fracs, and we see opportunities to rationalize the combined company's activities to maximize capital and operating efficiencies. Moving to the Permian, our existing asset base is clearly much larger in size, making the Marathon acreage position more of a traditional bolt-on, adding 400 more locations to our already deep inventory base. Marathon's position is lightly developed today, and recent performance has shown strong oil productivity.
Marathon's acreage will also provide us more opportunities to core up for longer lateral developments via swaps and trades, which is something that we do every day. The Anadarko Basin is primarily focused on natural gas. We see this as a core option on the normalization of U.S. gas fundamentals driven by growing power and LNG-related demand. Finally, in Equatorial Guinea, we'll add two MTPA of net LNG capacity to our global portfolio. Equatorial Guinea is a free cash flow engine for Marathon today, and Marathon's been working hard to improve this asset, which is evident with the five-year free cash flow profile that the company has recently outlined. As we further build out our LNG business, we will leverage our technical and commercial capabilities to enhance the value of these assets over time.
Moving to slide nine, our initial synergy target is at least $500 million per year, which includes roughly $250 million from G&A costs, $150 million from operating costs and commercial improvements, and $100 million from capital costs. From a G&A perspective, we will reduce overlapping costs across the combined organization. Regarding operating costs, we'll streamline field operations throughout the Lower 48, taking advantage of the adjacencies across the combined footprint. We will also leverage our scale on the procurement side. Similar to our prior major Permian transactions, we'll take full advantage of our commercial capabilities in order to maximize realizations and reduce T&P costs. Finally, moving to capital, we'll also leverage our enhanced cost-based footprint to drive further reductions in drilling and completion costs.
Putting it all together, we see $500 million in synergies as a good starting point, which we intend to achieve on a run rate basis within the first year after closing. As we've demonstrated in past transactions, we think there will be upside potential as we close the deal and begin the integration process. Moving to slide 10, I want to step back and talk about this transaction in the context of our overall portfolio. The key takeaway is that ConocoPhillips remains differential by its depth, durability, and diversity while adding further scale to our unconventional portfolio. Following this transaction, we will remain the largest independent global upstream company.
We'll enhance our position as one of the most durable companies in the U.S. unconventional industry, as measured by depth and quality of our remaining inventory, and we'll retain the benefits of our diverse global portfolio with roughly 40% of our production coming from outside of the Lower 48. This is before the organic investments in LNG, Willow, and other conventional assets that will come online over the years ahead. I'll now turn it back to Ryan to talk about our distributions and then to wrap up.
Thanks, Andy. Now, moving to slide 11, I wanted to provide a bit more context for our updated return on capital plan. Let me start with the dividend. Independent of this transaction, we have announced a plan to increase our ordinary base dividend by 34% to $0.78 per share in the fourth quarter. This will effectively roll the current $0.20 per share VROC into the base. We have spent a fair amount of time looking at this. Based on all of our portfolio improvements we have made in the recent years, we feel quite comfortable with this step change in our ordinary dividend, driven by the quality of our asset base and the durability of our standalone cash flow profile. We can continue to grow the ordinary dividend at a rate that is competitive with the top quartile of the S&P 500.
This will only be helped by the transaction, which further reduces our free cash flow breakeven. Moving to share buybacks. Upon the closing of the transaction and assuming recent commodity prices, we will increase the annual run rate of buybacks to over $7 billion, up from over $5 billion on a standalone basis today. When combined with our higher ordinary dividend, this would put our total quantum of distributions at a run rate that is over $11 billion. We are confident that this pace of share buybacks will be sustainable, allowing for at least $20 billion of buybacks in the first three years after the transaction closes, effectively retiring the equivalent amount of the newly issued equity within two to three years of closing.
All this is consistent with our long-term framework to return at least 30% of our CFO to shareholders through the cycles, as well as our long-term track record that is well over 40% of CFO. To wrap up on slide 12, as I said at our analysts and investor meeting just over a year ago, we will continue to execute on our plan and look for ways to make it better. The acquisition of Marathon does just that. It fits our framework, it makes our plan better, and it makes the assets better. The transaction will be accretive day one. We have line of sight to at least $500 million in annual synergies with upside potential. The combined company will have a lower free cash flow breakeven, and we are increasing our ordinary dividend and share buybacks with total distributions that are consistent with our long-term CFO-based track record.
We continue to get better, and I continue to believe that ConocoPhillips is the must-own E&P in your portfolio. Now let me turn the call back over to the operator, and we'll start the Q&A.
Thank you. We will now begin the question- and- answer session. In the interest of time, we ask that you limit yourself to one question. If you have a question, please press star one one on your touchtone phone. If you wish to be removed from the queue, please press star one one again. If you're using a speakerphone, you may need to pick up the handset first before pressing the numbers. Once again, if you have a question, please press star one one on your touchtone phone. One moment for our first question. Our first question comes from the line of Lloyd Byrne with Jefferies.
Hey, good morning, everyone. Congrats. Ryan, I've done this for a long time, and I would argue no one has made more correct M&A decisions than your team, both timing and asset quality-wise. So I guess what I'm interested in is why now, and what is it that makes this opportunity the right one when so many others have gone through it? Maybe you talked about scale a couple of times, and maybe that's something you could focus on.
Yeah, Lloyd, thanks. Appreciate the question. Look, we've always tried to be opportunistic. We look at all the kinds of opportunities that are out there. We stepped back a number of years ago looking for where around the world have the lowest cost of supply rocks and then who owns those rocks. So we follow the companies like that and certainly identified the shale, both here in North America and U.S. Lower 48, Canada, and some conventional assets around the world that were very interesting to us. So we followed this for quite some time. Tend to be opportunistic, but most importantly, it has to fit our framework. So we have a very which we've tried to communicate to you and we've showed you repeatedly what our framework looks like.
We never know when these opportunities come available, and this one certainly came available or came to our attention here a few weeks ago. We spent some time looking at it. We could see the we know the Eagle Ford quite well, the Bakken quite well, and saw the significant overlap in the opportunity that this represented for the company. We stepped back and made sure it fits our framework, that it makes our 10-year plan better, and that we have a clear line of sight to make the assets better. That clearly checked all the boxes for the company. First and foremost, it fit our framework. It fit how we think about the business, how we think about mid-cycle prices, how we think about the commodity price.
And look, we think we're heading into a period of what I'd call kind of shale 2.0, which it's more about using technology and efficiencies, data analytics, and some of the refrac potential that we can get into, I'm sure, on the call a little bit that we see that allows us to extend some tier one inventory both in the Eagle Ford and the Bakken. And we're pretty excited about what this next leg is going to show for the company. And so that's why this is such a good fit at this particular point in time for us in the company. We weren't necessarily out looking for something, but it was an opportunity that presented itself.
Great. Thanks. Makes sense.
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Betty Jiang with Barclays. Your line is now open. Betty, your line is now open.
Oh, sorry. Good morning. Congratulations on the deal. I want to focus a bit more on the synergy side. Looking at the $500 million annual savings, specifically perhaps on the cost and commercial optimization and then the capital optimization, I do think that Marathon did a good job managing costs. You think where the most opportunities are on the cost side, is that going to get realized in LOE? And then on the capital optimization side, will we start seeing some different capital allocation across the various places in Marathon's portfolio where you start seeing that upside? Thank you.
Hey, Betty, this is Andy. I can take that question. Maybe starting on the cost side of it, and I think taking it sort of really back to sort of the beginning, is that we expect this to be a pretty seamless integration after we close. And I think we touched on this in some of the prepared remarks. Marathon's a very good cultural fit with us, similar safety, operational focus, and ESG focus. And it certainly helps as we're going through the integration. We're literally down the street from each other. And so I think maybe starting on the G&A side of things, there's some pretty obvious G&A synergies. I think the slide we showed with the math on the overlap of the assets, given the adjacency of those assets, we expect the back-office support to be seamlessly integrated. And that's essentially going to remove any duplication.
We're also going to fold Marathon into all of our systems and processes and fully integrate it into our work streams. And then all of the corporate-related functions are going to be combined. So I think on the G&A side, and we refer to the scale things as an example of bringing it together into our scale, allows to take all of that duplication out. On the operating cost side of things, there's some of the examples of synergies there. We both have kind of basic examples. We both have field offices and operations that are essentially crisscrossing each other in the field. And we'll mobilize the workforces and combine that footprint, again, sort of seeing the savings there.
But then sort of more on sort of the technical side of running the assets, we see pretty good opportunities to rationalize the workover rigs that we're running on that combined footprint. So again, there'll be opportunities there. On the capital side of the equation, what we're specifically talking to here in the synergies that we're sort of committing to in the $500 million, this is going to be to start with, again, from our size and scale on the supply chain side of things, we're going to see advantage in things like OCTG cost rigs, frac, and sand. And I don't want to underestimate sort of the value there is in sort of our ability to run consistent programs of scale, how that drives cost savings for us. Another example there, in the Eagle Ford, we'd expect to implement super zippers and remote frac operations.
That's not something that Marathon is doing today. So that's kind of how we see the way we'll get to the capital savings. But I think you also mentioned the commercial. And there's things that we see as upside that we haven't baked into the valuation. We see our global commercial footprint being a real advantage to us, just like we did when we acquired Concho. And we'd expect to see enhanced value across oil, gas, and NGL from these assets. And then the other piece is that we're pretty excited about, and we haven't factored value into this at this point, but the ability to sort of rework combined drilling programs within the actual assets themselves and across the basins is going to drive value for us over time. And Bakken's a great example of this where combining them will be a better company.
We see opportunities to reduce the total rig and frac counts that we have. We're both running very similar programs today, and we'll be able to level load frac crews. There'll be clear savings there. We haven't factored that in yet. That's sort of what we're excited about, the teams getting their hands on and being able to optimize those programs. I think we've demonstrated in the past a track record that we're able to seamlessly integrate assets. We think this one with the overlap is going to be reasonably straightforward for us. We expect to basically realize a fair bit of upside to that.
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Roger Read with Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.
Yeah, good morning and congratulations on the transaction here. Since you kind of opened it up on a previous response, the refrac opportunity, as we think about that within the overall cost of supply and, as you said, moving some of the I believe you said Bakken acreage into a tier one level. What exactly is that process? How should we think about that developing?
Yeah. Yeah, Roger, this is Nick. Maybe we just start back on the inventory that we spoke about in the prepared remarks on the development side. Again, we start with 2,000 locations across the three basins. Eagle Ford, you can think about that, about 1,000 locations there. And then between Bakken and the Permian, that's roughly equally split across that very competitive cost of supply and very competitive in our overall portfolio, such the development side. So back to your question on the refracs, we have a long history, as you're aware of, with doing refracs specifically in Eagle Ford over five-plus years and where we see roughly a 60% uplift in expected ultimate recovery. And then we continue to test new refrac techniques and expand that across the entire Eagle Ford portfolio. And what that is leading to, Roger, is expanding that inventory in our own company.
And we see very promising opportunities to expand that to Marathon. And that leads to the 1,000 locations in Eagle Ford for refracs. Now, regarding the cost of supply component, put a little bit of background on that. A typical refrac costs about 60%-70% of a new well. We're actually even seeing some of those costs coming even below the 60% mark, which is very encouraging. And again, when you look at the early vintage wells that we do refracs on, we're getting 60% uplift of EOR compared to that original well location. On the cost of supply, very competitive. They're in the low $30s to high $30s on cost of supply. And as we talked about, that's really expanding that tier one inventory. So very competitive in the portfolio. And then I think what gives us further confidence is that five-year history. So we've got demonstrated performance.
We've got consistent performance of the refracs. We're looking at these new refrac techniques and really promising results. That gives us the confidence in that refrac strategy and the go-forward inventory that Andy referenced.
I would add one thing, Roger, real quick too. Remember, it's where the rocks are at. So it's the type of rocks that you have, and the inventory goes consistent with that. So remember where the volatile window is and where that kind of window is at. That makes a difference on the capability around the refracs.
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of John Royall with JP Morgan. Your line is now open.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on the deal. I wanted to go through the return of capital. So can you talk about how you stress-test your base dividend given the hike? And if you can confirm, the VROC will now fold into the base. And if that's the case, what changed in your thinking there between previously using the VROC and now not? And should we think of the buyback now as kind of the more variable flywheel?
Yeah. Good morning, John. This is Bill. Maybe just start with our return of capital on our ordinary dividends. So as we talked about on our prepared remarks and as Ryan said this morning, that irrespective of the transaction, we are quite confident in the cash flows and improvement that we've seen over time in the portfolio. So increasing the ordinary dividend in the fourth quarter is the plan. It's essentially rolling VROC into that. We really like where we're at in the portfolio on that. And of course, we stress-test the portfolio. You saw in AIM, we do a $40 stress test on that. And it's just an indication of the strength of the portfolio and the improvements we've made over time that allows us to confidently roll that into our ordinary dividend.
I think it's important that as we look at that and as we think about that as a company, one of the things that we believe continues to be important is the ability to grow that ordinary dividend consistent with the top quartile of dividend-paying stocks in the S&P. And so we've looked through time on our plans, and we feel quite confident in our ability to do that through the cycle. Then when you think about the overall return of capital, as we indicated today, that at current pricing, we'd expect on close to increase our buybacks by about $2 billion. That'll take the total quantum up to a little north of $11 billion. We're currently at about a 40/60 split. That'll take us up to 35/65. We really like the value of our shares. We think that there's good value in there.
So leading into that, we think makes sense as a well-balanced portfolio. And then VROC, so certainly leaning into our shares right now, we think makes the most sense. But VROC continues to be a tool in our portfolio, particularly if we see high-price excursions again in the future. So that really is how we're thinking about it. It's pretty consistent, and it's pretty structured.
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Alastair Syme with Citi. Your line is now open.
Thanks very much. Thanks for all the color about sort of refrac and opportunities. I just wanted to try and put that in volume terms because I think you talked to the analysts day last year about the backend coming off production plateau at the end of this decade and I think Eagle Ford for the early 2030s. So does this transaction change your perspective on a pro forma basis of when these basins start to mature and decline? Thank you.
Hey, Alastair. This is Andy. I'll take that question. So in terms of the way we think about the growth, as we always have said, our primary focus is on the returns, and the growth is the outcome. And we really focus on making sure we execute the scope as efficiently as we can. And that's where we're laser-focused. But that said, specifically to your question around sort of the impact of this on our overall growth rate, it really doesn't change what we showed in May over the 10-year plan at all in terms of the output of what we see the growth of the company being. As we combine the programs, we'll be looking to an opportunity to sort of optimize them, as we previously talked on. And we've not really factored any of the sort of optimizing of the programs into this yet.
That's sort of all upside that we'll be focused on from the growth. And I do want to sort of I know we're here talking about this transaction today, but I do want to remind everybody sort of our growth doesn't just come from the unconventionals. We're going to have a steady drumbeat of growth coming in terms of, I think, of cash flow growth, but it has production, obviously, with it too as we second half of the decade, as we have the NFE projects, the Port Arthur projects, the NFS projects, the Willow coming on. So I wouldn't really be changing anything in terms of what we've previously said about growth.
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Richardson with Evercore ISI. Your line is now open.
Hi. Good morning. Quick one, if I could. Thanks for slipping me in. I think it's implicit, but it hasn't been explicitly. I mean, Marathon had been spending about $2 billion a year of CapEx and running about nine-10 rigs in the Lower 48. So just wondering if you could confirm, as you've looked at it, acknowledging you've got $100 million of capital optimization synergies, but in your base case, you expect to effectively run a very similar program going forward. And if I could also slip in one, Ryan, could you just talk a little bit about the divestiture target here? And is that weighted? Appreciate that's probably across the portfolio, but is it weighted legacy Conoco or anything you see at Marathon to the extent that you can divulge at this point? Thanks very much.
Yeah. Thanks, Stephen. I'll take the last one first, and maybe have Andy jump in on your first question. But yeah, the disposition target, look, I think people recognize we've been pretty good rationalizing the portfolio quite a bit over the last number of years. And we do this just a matter of a good course of business. And we recognize with the acquisition of Marathon, the opportunity is going to be there to continue to hone the portfolio, find out those pieces of our assets that don't fit in the portfolio, and turn them out. So we put out a $2 billion disposition target over the next couple of years after we get through close. And that's just going to be rationalizing, going through it. That's the total portfolio.
It's not focused on one area or another, but recognize that we've done that over the past, and we'll continue to do that. It's just good business, put the cash on the balance sheet, and just make our company stronger and lower breakevens, lower decline rates, lower capital intensity. So it's the right thing to do, especially for those uncompetitive assets. So maybe have Nick answer the first part of your question on the scope of the Marathon program.
Yeah. If you look at what they're running, as you mentioned, kind of typically, as they guided to in the Q1 call, kind of a nine-10 rig program out there. Majority of those rigs, roughly four in the Eagle Ford, as Andy mentioned, kind of three in the Bakken, and then lesser extent in Permian as well as Anadarko. So as we've done since the second half of 2022, we're really going to focus on level-loaded steady-state programs where we can drive that operating efficiency, which leads to the improved capital efficiency. So with more feet per day, more stages per day, Andy referenced super zippers in Eagle Ford, remote frac. We see opportunities to drive that. And that's through that level-loaded steady-state program.
On the refracs as well, there's an opportunity where we use remote frac, which we've been doing over the last couple of years and seeing really good improvements there on total pumping hours per day. So very similar, that nine-10 rigs. We don't expect to do any immediate plans to change activity, but we will do some rationalization, as Andy mentioned, for example, in the Bakken. So we'll look at frac gaps and overall operating efficiency there. Do we drop a rig and go to 1-1.5 frac crews in there as an example as we further dig into it? So excited about the opportunity as we go in and look at the total rig count and then the fracs.
Yeah. And I think, Stephen, we're going to find an opportunity to move stuff around the basins and reoptimize the program based on a bigger footprint that we have, which will lead to upside value that Andy talked about and some of the capital synergies that we see. We see a lot of opportunity there.
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Scott Hanold with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.
Thanks. Ryan, could you talk a little bit about your thoughts on the timing of closing by the end of this year and regarding maybe some FTC scrutiny around kind of market share in Eagle Ford, Bakken, and the Permian?
Yeah, Scott. I think it'll be up to the FTC ultimately. I think the fourth quarter sort of anticipated close kind of takes a look at the past transactions that the FTC has done. They'll have to make a decision whether there's a second request or not, which is really what extends the timeline a little bit. We think this is pretty clean. I think we're encouraged by the commentary that's coming out of the FTC that they recognize the oil is a global market, and it trades in a global market, and this is a very, very, very small % of that global market. I think that's an important first step that they've already kind of gotten over that Rubicon with some of the deals that have come over the last couple of years that you're familiar with.
But we're trying to be a little bit conservative in terms of timeline, but ultimately, it's up to the FTC. We'll put all the information in. The shareholder vote will occur on the Marathon side, and then we'll put the information on the Hart-Scott-Rodino filing. And then it's really up to the FTC to take a look at that and make their decision on if any more data or information is required. But our timeline expects that'll take about what we've seen with some of the prior transactions and the kind of timeline that they've been under.
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Neal Dingmann with Truist Securities. Your line is now open.
Morning . Thanks for the time. Just quick one on capital allocation. I'm just wondering, now with the new portfolios you're adding, obviously, and quality assets, will that change any thoughts regarding whether Alaska, LNG, as far as allocating capital to other non-Lower 48 areas?
No. I think we've been pretty transparent and clear about how we allocate capital inside the company. We still use a $40-ish cost of supply cutoff to allocate capital. So any project or any drilling program or any opportunity within our portfolio has got to meet that kind of criteria. Specific to your point on Alaska, LNG, that's not a project that we've indicated a desire to participate in, although we're willing to be a wellhead seller of gas, so.
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Ryan Todd with Piper Sandler. Your line is now open.
Hey, thanks. Maybe a follow-up on the Bakken. I mean, I don't know if it's fair to say, historically, the Bakken has always felt a little less core for you relative to some of the other assets in your portfolio. How does this deal impact how you view the Bakken kind of internally within the portfolio? And what types of upside there? I think Marathon recently had been seeing some good results with 3 mi laterals. Is that something that you're interested in and you see upside in? Does the combination provide a greater ability to extend longer laterals or allocate, I guess, change the way in terms of how you view the Bakken within the portfolio?
Yeah, Ryan. We definitely like Marathon's Bakken footprint and the inventory up there. I'll speak to the 3 mi laterals here in a second. If you look at kind of three main asset areas, I got the assets up to the north, and then you come down into the Hector and Ajax units, and that's where you roughly got 70% of that inventory. But if you step back a little bit on the Bakken, as we've talked about, as a standalone company, we have roughly a decade of drilling inventory there, the same with Marathon. So combined on a pro forma basis, we've got well over a decade of drilling inventory that's very competitive within the Bakken. It's oil-weighted. We know it really well. As I talked about on the southern Bakken assets down in Ajax and Hector, there's a strong adjacent components between the two companies.
As you referenced, they've had some really good results in some 3 mi laterals, very encouraging results there. We have direct adjacent acreage with 3 mi opportunities that are in our plan, both near-term and mid-term. So very excited about sharing development strategies and sharing results across as we think about how to optimize those longer lateral developments. So yeah, I think Bakken's going to be an opportunity where we can continue to look at expanding the long lateral inventory. And as we talked about, there's definitely some activity rationalization when we look at overall rigs and frac crews. When we look at the operating components, we're seeing more stages per day or more feet per day being executed in that asset.
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Josh Silverstein with UBS. Your line is now open.
Yeah, thanks. Good morning, guys. I was curious how the EG assets play into your LNG strategy, if you're thinking about accelerating any of the projects that Marathon had over there for the next couple of years. And as you're kind of thinking about matching up supply and demand offtakes, does this impact that thought as well? Thanks.
Hi, this is Andy. Yeah, I can take that one. Yeah. So Equatorial Guinea, as kind of stated in prior remarks, it's a solid free cash flow asset. And I think Marathon's outlined a very credible plan for what they plan to do over the next five years or so. And obviously, we look very closely at that. And that's sort of how we've really sort of first taken a look at the asset. But as you referenced, there's upside here. This is an LNG plant that isn't at full capacity. And there is opportunity here to third-party tiebacks. And I think with our global LNG footprint, we see this as kind of another very interesting sort of liquefaction point where we're building out our global portfolio and the ability to move LNG between Europe and Asia.
So yeah, it's going to be a very helpful sort of asset to add into our portfolio. And I should also mention that we kind of know this asset pretty well because it is using our Cascade technology. So we're very familiar with the facility and sort of what the abilities of the facility are. So yeah, I'd say this is one that we're intrigued by. And it's a nice addition, basically, in terms of building out our global LNG portfolio.
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Paul Cheng with Scotiabank. Your line is now open.
Hey, guys. Good morning. Thank you for the time. Ryan, if we look at this transaction, everything looked great. That is attractive. With the exception of one item, which is Marathon, the inventory backlog life is much shorter than you guys. I mean, with the 2,000 gross inventory, to maintain their production is probably about 220-250 wells. So we may be talking about, say, somewhere in the eight-10 years on their life. You have much longer. So how important is that into your thinking or does it matter to you? For a company like you guys, for the Lower 48, what is the optimum inventory life from your opinion? Thank you.
Yeah. I don't know if we think about sort of an optimum inventory life. Paul, we mostly are focused on how much low-cost supply inventory does it create and how much can we create using some of our technology, operating practices, and what we think. So as we got into their data room and looked a little bit harder at the data, I think your data is probably right on a gross basis, but on a net basis, being that 8 years, on a net basis, it's well over 10 years. So one, you have a gross net. You have to be careful with Paul a little bit there. But more importantly for us is we got in there and looked. We saw some of the recent refracuring results that we've had in our portfolio.
As we start to apply that in a broader sense than what Marathon has been doing in their portfolio, we see some extension of some great opportunities that bring acreage back into what we would call that tier one category. Again, these are assets both in the Eagle Ford and the Bakken that they've been managing, similar to us in a plateau sense. It reduces the capital intensity, doesn't require a lot. You're not battling high growth rates coming into the assets, and you're not battling the kind of higher decline rates. For us, we see it a great fit into the portfolio. It just adds duration, depth, and durability and resilience to our portfolio. It gives us a lot more optionality around areas that we know really well. We know the Eagle Ford. We know the Bakken and obviously the Permian.
We know the Anadarko Basin. We were there for a long, long time as well and kind of back into that basin as well. For us, we see over a decade of new opportunity that fits it in a competitive place in terms of how we're allocating capital inside the portfolio today. We're pretty excited to bring it in. We think there's going to be more optionality as we get in and close the deal and understand the assets and apply some of the technology that Nick talked about to those assets.
Liz, I think we have time for one more.
One moment for our last question. This question comes from the line of Leo Mariani with Roth MKM. Your line is now open.
Hey, guys. Just wanted to ask about consideration on the transaction here. So you obviously came out into an all-stock transaction, but you're up in the buyback with a plan to basically buy back all those shares within three years. Was there not any consideration of maybe some kind of cash component? Feels like that might have juiced the returns a bit here. Just wanted to see if you can kind of comment on how you thought about the consideration paid here.
Yeah, Leo, fairly easy. The seller wanted all stock. Seller didn't want any cash. So with full participation in the upside. So the structure was more at the demand of the seller.
We have no further questions at this time. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.