Okay, we're going to keep things moving. Delighted to have our next presenter, EOG Resources, which has been one of the most influential and important companies in the U.S. shale revolution. Joining me on stage is EOG's EVP and COO, Jeff Leitzell. Jeff, how are you?
I'm good, Arun. How are you doing?
I'm doing well. We're just commenting that EOG's had a lot of noteworthy announcements over the last several weeks, and so really excited to dig in more on the EOG story. Jeff, any talk about an oil and gas levered company starts with kind of the macro. Could you talk about EOG's latest thoughts on the macro environment? I know you and Ezra and the team keep a really detailed group that monitors kind of the oil macro.
Yeah, we try to, and they've been running around in circles lately, to say the least. Obviously, there's been a lot of geopolitical volatility out there, so you kind of got to set that aside because things have been changing by the day. Really, if you look at supply and demand fundamentals, I think the way we look at it is from the demand side, we think that demand looks pretty good, looks pretty strong around the world right now. The big question with that is obviously going to be how did the tariffs flow through, and how does that really ultimately affect when we work through all of this trade negotiation? I think that's really one of the big overhangs that we'll just kind of have to watch and see what happens from a demand side.
Really, I think the story is more on the supply side, where first off, you look at OPEC+. Obviously, they are going to be bringing their barrels back on accelerated, which I think obviously will probably cause some near-term softness in pricing. The way we look at it is, I mean, world inventories are pretty low, and we need the barrels back online. Ultimately, we think a large majority of those barrels will go into inventory. What we will really end up doing as an industry is understanding where OPEC+ is from a spare capacity standpoint sometime in the middle of next year.
At that point, I think it'll become apparent that the spare capacity that is there in the world, with the demand that we have, that I think we'll start to see an elevation in pricing, and we'll have a really good macro for oil moving forward in the future. The last thing to really tie into that is also looking at the U.S. I mean, obviously, the U.S. has been pretty disciplined. You can see that their production has kind of flattened off, so I don't really think that they're going to be a big lever to really change any of that from the supply standpoint.
Yeah, I want to maybe go back to your 1Q call. EOG decided to make a refinement to your program for 2025. Can you highlight what exactly you did?
Yeah, sure. Obviously, there was an announcement back in May, obviously with the tariffs, Liberation Day, and there was just a lot of uncertainty that kind of went into the market right there. It seemed like it was going to be headwind uncertainty. We really looked at the portfolio and looked at our plan, which obviously we've got extremely low breakevens. The company is wonderfully positioned to go ahead and operate right through these prices. It felt prudent and to be capital disciplined to go ahead and take a look at the plan and see if we couldn't optimize it with that uncertainty, because there was a good chance that you were going to probably see oil for an extended period of time if the tariffs stuck in the $50s or lower.
What we did was we went ahead and we pulled back our CapEx from $6.2 billion to $6 billion. It is a $200 million pullback for pretty minimal volumes associated with that. What it really did was it optimized the overall financials and the free cash flow on the year for the company. Where we sit right now with that optimized plan, we feel great about it. We feel really good on executing it through the remainder of the year. With the volatility that is out there, I know there are a lot of questions that, hey, are you going to change your plan again? Will you move around? I think with the volatility, we feel pretty comfortable with this plan to go ahead and execute through the rest of the year.
Yeah. One of the key talking points from Q1 earnings is this notion that U.S. shale production for oil may have peaked. I was wondering if you could talk about your thoughts on that topic and what are the implications for the oil macro, for EOG, for U.S. shale industry if this is the case.
I do agree. I think U.S. shale oil has definitely slowed. There's no doubt about it. I think it's for a multitude of reasons across the board. The first thing is, obviously, with all the unconventional production that's coming online in the U.S., there's obviously very steep decline with that. Every single year we have more and more decline that we have to backfill before you ever see any growth out of the U.S. I think that's one thing. The second thing is capital discipline across industry. What I mean by that is I think a lot of companies are protecting their returns and their free cash flow. Also, they're not wanting to probably step out in lesser quality of acreage or productive acreage that will actually not be added to their portfolio and obviously will affect their returns.
I think that's some of it that you're seeing right there. Ultimately, I think looking at full industry, because they've always shocked us, I mean, they always rear their head when you don't expect it. I think they could grow if they wanted to, but it would take drilling wells that, like I said, would be degrading capital efficiency. I don't think companies are going to do that at that point. I do think that we are going to, over the next handful of years, probably peak and plateau off a little bit. Now, from EOG standpoint, we really separate the two. We're in great shape. Even if industry can't grow, our portfolio has never been stronger. Our inventory has never been stronger. Recently, with our acquisition, we hope to close in the third quarter of Encino.
We have over 12+ billion bbl of resource potential within the company, and we have adequate potentials to be able to grow for many years to come. That's one thing that we want to do in the company is, no matter what the rest of the industry does, we want to make sure we're positioning ourselves getting better every day and we have the ability to improve the company day in and day out.
The company has made some countercyclical investments on the natural gas side. Think about Dorado, some of the marketing agreements you've done with Cheniere. Could you give us your latest thoughts on the natural gas supply-demand dynamics, how those could play out in 2025 and 2026 and longer term?
Sure. We're extremely constructive, like a lot of people, obviously, on natural gas. With the LNG capacity that's going to be coming on, continuing to come on over the next couple of years, along with the power generation demand that's going to be out there, we see somewhere between kind of a 4%-6% compounded annual growth rate for natural gas demand through the rest of the decade. Very robust there. I think whenever you roll all that up, we kind of see a long-term natural gas price, as you can see in the strip, somewhere around $4.50+ , which is extremely attractive for industry.
When you look at EOG just as a whole, I think that's what excites us even more about that future out in front of us is we've got our Dorado asset down there in South Texas, which is extremely proximal to the market center. It's an extremely prolific resource. It's 20 TCF. We've obviously got a lot of premium marketing capacity with our LNG agreements and our offtake there on the coast to really take advantage of those kind of prices throughout time. Obviously, I think the main goal there is in the natural gas to be able to move that play at a very measured pace and make sure we're improving it. It's so prolific. We've got a BCF pipeline that we can go ahead and grow into and probably grow into pretty quick.
Okay. Jeff, I'm wondering if you could provide just a brief operating update. How are you tracking relative to your key operational financial targets for 2Q and maybe the full year?
Not giving too much color on Q2, but really it goes back to talking about that optimized plan that we walked through. I think we feel really good about where everything's at. The company, I mean, from an operational standpoint, is firing on all cylinders, continuing to lower the cost basis. We're on track this year to reduce well cost again, another low single digits. There may be some upside with that, obviously, with what's going to happen with industry and pricing and potentially service costs. Everything's in line right now so far for the year. True to EOG's nature, we feel really comfortable on executing on that plan.
All right. Let's shift gears, talk a little bit about some of the headlines I mentioned. You announced a $5.6 billion all-cash acquisition of Encino. Those who have studied EOG know that you guys do not do much, if any, M&A. I don't think I remember anything of scale since the Yates transaction, probably in 2016, right?
Yeah, that's it. It's been almost 10 years.
Can you talk a little bit about the industrial logic of this transaction that you just announced?
Sure. What I'd say it is, is it's just a continuation of kind of our organic exploration progress we've had up there in the Utica. Obviously, we've been drilling up there for a handful of years. We've had a ton of success, and it really just made sense. We obviously had paid attention. We knew that Encino was a large player up there. They were the largest producer and the largest acreage holder. It really had gotten to the point with the success we'd seen in the play, the productivity, and really the overall economics that we can get in the Utica, extremely low cost basis. It's one of the lowest cost basins, I would say, and easiest operating basins in the U.S. With that, it just made a lot of sense to go ahead and increase our footprint there.
What we ended up doing with the deal is we increased our working interest underneath our northern acreage in the Utica over 20% because Encino had working interest underneath that. We overdoubled our acreage in the volatile oil window to 485,000 acres. The volatile oil window really is, at this point, as far as tested, the most prolific part of the play. The last thing, which I know it's the Northeast, and if you're talking about gas, it can be a tough market, but we were actually really excited that Encino had a lot of obviously very premium gas acreage. Along with that acreage, they also had very good marketing and transportation agreements. They did a really good job of locking in at the right time and the right duration a large amount of capacity, which obviously had really attractive price realization.
All in all, we're just excited to go ahead and hopefully get this thing closed in the third quarter, and we'll get it over into our operational engineers' and our geoscientists' hands. I think there's a lot of extra value we can really extract out of the acreage.
Okay. We'll come back to the acquisition in just a few minutes. You also announced a bolt-on in the Eagle Ford in Atascosa County for $275 million. Views on the strategic nature of this deal, and does this signify a more muscular approach to A&D from EOG?
Yeah, I think this is right in the ballpark of what we talked about, that we want to be opportunistic with and with bolt-on acquisitions in existing plays. What it is, is it's 30,000 acres, as you stated. It's right in the center of the Eagle Ford. It's been there pretty much undeveloped throughout time. We've looked at it. We've tried to take stabs and opportunities to get it, and the stars just didn't align. The opportunity finally, everything lined up. There's a handful of wells on it, but it's fairly open. What we're able to do with this acreage is we're able to obviously leverage all of our geologic and reservoir knowledge around that area, marketing agreements, the infrastructure that we have.
We are also able to take our technology and our cost basis into that acreage, which is really going to obviously improve the overall economics from what we have seen previously drilled on it. We have data all the way around the whole 30,000 acres, and it all is in our portfolio. It meets our very robust hurdle rate of direct after-tax rate of return of 30% at bottom cycle pricing, $45 oil and $2.50 gas. The last thing that I would really say about that bolt-on acquisition is it commands capital immediately. It competes in our portfolio. We are actually out there drilling on it probably today and definitely the second half of this year because the economics on it are so good. It is just a perfect example of exactly what we are trying to do in the company.
Just maybe a follow-up there. You did buy some virgin acreage here, which is good. Some of the legacy well performance does not match up to EOG's on a perfect basis. Do you see some opportunities for self-help here?
Absolutely. In the Eagle Ford, that's one of those things we use as an example that we were drilling the best rock 15+ years ago out in the east. As we've kind of moved forward with it and we've moved over to the West, it's not quite as good of rock. Really what we've done is advance our technology, extending laterals out, refining our targeting. Really our completion designs there have unlocked a lot of new opportunity. It's brought a lot of acreage that we never thought would be in our inventory up into our inventory. We continue to do that. I think a lot of the acreage, the 30,000 acres it already meets our hurdle rate. There may be a little bit in the north, which we think with our technology will easily hit our hurdle rate.
Yeah, we definitely see a lot of upside with it.
Two-parter on efficiency gains in the OFS environment that you touched on a little bit. We still are amazed that this far into the shale development life cycle, that we're still seeing some eye-popping efficiency gains on the drilling and completion side. I mean, how much or what have you been able to achieve as we think about 2025 on a year-over-year basis? And what more can you do as a company?
I don't think there's an end in sight. We've been asking the question for, I think I get it asked every single year. If you asked me five years ago, I would have said the same thing I'll say today. Running room is immense. The way I explain it is, as an industry, I think we're pretty poor at what we do if you look at the recovery factors. When you're talking about high single-digit or low double-digit recovery factors, we've got a long way that we can go from a technology, innovation, and operational efficiency standpoint. There are new technologies that are being worked on out there. I know we're one of the groups that continues to look at new innovative ways to push that forward.
No, I think there's still quite a long runway to be able to continue to reduce the cost basis on these and improve the overall performance of unconventional wells in the U.S.
Okay. You mentioned that your outlook or your guidance baked in low single-digit year-over-year declines in well cost, but there could be more tailwinds on the cost side. Can you maybe elaborate a little bit on that?
Yeah. Where that is, is the majority of our costs that we see or cost reductions year-over-year usually come from efficiencies. I mean, on the service side, we primarily use all high-spec rigs and fract fleets. And those have been fairly highly utilized even with the pullback in overall activity. We have not seen a huge reduction in overall service costs. I will say ever since the announcement in May with the tariffs, and a lot of companies came out with reduced activity plans, we have seen a few more companies come to the table kind of talking about pricing, being willing to come off a little bit. I think we are seeing a little bit of softness in the market, but it is cautious softness because they do know there is volatility and things could change very quickly.
I think there could be some upside to service costs this year.
Okay. EOG has now labeled the Utica as its third foundational asset or play in the company, joining the Delaware and obviously the Eagle Ford. Can you talk to us about how things are trending in the field and how do returns now in the Utica compare to what you're seeing in the Delaware and the Eagle Ford?
Yeah. The great thing about the Utica is, I mean, I think through this time period right now, we've only drilled about 50 wells, and we really haven't had a miss up there. It's been absolutely outstanding. What I'd say about the Utica is, first off, it is the easiest operational environment that I've seen, at least within our portfolio. It's very easy drilling. We've had laterals that we've been able to record do 13,000 ft in one day in one trip. I mean, that's how quick this stuff drills. The actual depth of it is kind of perfectly situated in that volatile oil window to where you've got enough pressure for lift and good productivity, but then also you've got fairly decent and lower frac pressures. That definitely helps out a lot too.
Yeah, right now we're kind of in the very early innings is what I'd say in the Utica. And we're seeing huge strides both on well cost and well performance. Ultimately, what we've been trying to do is get up to a consistent amount of activity. That's what we've done here in this last year where we're at least running one rig and one fract fleet. When you do that, you can really build a lot of sustainable efficiency gains. We've seen that, and it's really paid dividends this year. We've got the play to where we've got the finding cost somewhere between $6 and $8 a BOE, depending on where you're at in the acreage. We've got our drilling cost sub $650. Really, really making a lot of headway.
When you look at the productivity, it has met all of our expectations, if not surprised us to the upside on these wells. They truly are liquid wells. The EURs on them, their full life, are right in line with what our expectations were. They range anywhere from 60%-70% liquids. It continues to improve as we get a chance to get in there and really hone our completions technology. Obviously, with the Encino acquisition, you can see how excited we are about it. We are really excited to continue to push forward that asset and really extract the value out of it.
Yeah. Maybe just a question, a broader question on well productivity trends across your foundational assets. We did an update when we did our preview just a couple of days ago. It looked like Delaware well productivity was doing fine this year. How did you talk about productivity in three of these assets?
Yeah. Productivity-wise, if I look kind of even if you look at the foundational plays, I mean, it's been outstanding. It's been right on our expectations and on our forecast. As you know, it can vary. As you move around region to region, area to area, based off your well mix, it can vary. What we really have kind of seen and we've learned, taking the Permian, for example, is productivity is really just one variable that you need to look at. Ultimately, what we've gotten to a point is we've got that stringent return hurdle rate. Once it makes that, at that point, we're really trying to optimize all the metrics.
We're trying to optimize the returns, the productivity, the finding costs, the margins, the payout period to make sure we're extracting as much value as we possibly can out of that asset and maximizing the net present value per acre and per section. That's really the next thing that we've moved to. What we really see from that aspect on a productivity side, it's interesting that maximum productivity always doesn't equal maximum profitability because there's a balance in there of how you actually optimize and develop it. That's really what we're focused out there in the Delaware. In the Eagle Ford, a little bit more mature of an asset.
I mean, as I said there, it's more about driving technology and continuing to innovate because we're continuing to pull forward resources that we knew were there, but we never knew it would be economic or we could get it economic from a technology standpoint. That's how we're looking to extract the value. When you move to the Utica, I mean, that's just really, as I said, it's in the first couple of innings. It's just making sure we continue to move that forward at the right measured pace to where we don't get going too fast to where we actually destroy value. I think that's how we look at it across the portfolio. In the Utica, the performance continues to be on pace with what we see. I think there's levels of improvement.
Even down in the Eagle Ford, I mean, the consistency after 15 years of the productivity is just outstanding.
Okay. Let's shift gears a little bit and talk about international. Your passport has a few extra punches in it more recently.
A few.
Let's start with Trinidad, which has obviously been a core asset for the company for multiple decades, I think, right? What are some of the latest happenings in Trinidad because there are some growth projects you're investing in today?
Yeah. Trinidad is just a great piece of business for the company. We've been in it over 30 years. Really, we're getting to a point there to where we have pretty consistent activity. It used to be it was fairly intermittent, but we're finding enough exploration or prospects that really kind of fill a full rig line and really have a lot of value to pull forward. This year, what we're doing is we're executing on a four net well completions mentor program, full natural gas development, and everything's going outstanding with that so far. Also, we're building out our next platform, which is for our Coconut Project. We'll be building that out to prepare for next year.
Another exciting thing we actually just announced on our last call is on one of our exploration wells, the Barrow Well, we actually had an oil discovery. We knew there was a good potential for oil to be in the reservoir. We just were not sure if it was going to be commercially viable. Once we actually penetrated the zone and cut it, there was about 125 ft of very, very good oil-bearing sands there. We are currently in the process of really refining exactly the size of that prospect. We are also working with our partners there, BP, as you said, to get that to FID. Everything is looking great in Trinidad and continuing to kind of push forward a lot of great projects down there.
I believe it was on the fourth quarter call you updated the market on Bahrain.
Yeah. Bahrain would be the next one. That is one we're really excited about. That was an opportunity where that is onshore unconventional gas. If you ever see on the map, Bahrain is not a very big island. It's pretty small. What it is, is it's actually an anticline structure, geologic structure. There's a big fault that runs right along the crest of the island. It is extremely gas-bearing intervals down through it. They have penetration points. They've got pretty good data all the way around. They've got some seismic. They've got services and infrastructure. It kind of marks all the boxes. When you look at the overall productivity of even just some of the vertical wells and you do an uplift on it, it looks like it will be extremely competitive with our domestic portfolio.
Very much like Trinidad, we're able to sell those gas molecules directly there to the local government because Bahrain right now is short gas, and they're definitely looking for it. I believe they're actually importing right now from Saudi, and they obviously have aspirations to be independent on that front. Extremely excited about that. We'll drill the first couple of wells here starting at the back end of the year. We'll have an exploration phase, and then we'll be able to go ahead and either declare commerciality or move on or look at other opportunities.
Will this be developed, if you're successful, similar to short-cycle shale in the U.S.?
Yeah. Yes, absolutely. That is the goal. Obviously, with any entries in the international, we want to make sure we have ultimate flexibility to do what EOG does. That is exactly what the goal is. Now, through the exploration phase, the goal is to prove the reservoir. Ultimately, what we want to do is be able to implement a lot of the same processes, procedures, equipment, service companies, and techniques that we use in unconventional in the U.S.
The one recent international entry that has caused a lot of market questions and intrigue is you announced an entry into the UAE. Maybe provide a little bit of details because we are getting a lot of questions on that.
Yeah, sure. It's pretty high level. We announced it, but we were awarded a 900,000-acre concession in UAE. It's in the southern part of the country. It is all unconventional oil. This is very similar to Bahrain in that we have penetration points. We've got data. ADNOC is currently drilling on the acreage as we speak right now horizontally. That's what's a little bit different. We had an entry into Oman. It was a little bit of a wildcat. Here, we've got good productivity, and we really understand from the get-go what the geologic and the reservoir model looks like. Extremely excited about that opportunity. There, the goal is our exploration phase will be a little longer since it's 900,000 acres. Ultimately, we'll go in and start drilling the end of this year exploration to kind of delineate out the acreage.
Once we get to the end of the exploration term, the same thing, we can go ahead and we can declare commerciality on it. At that point, everything in the block will convey to EOG.
How would you gauge the PSC terms in the UAE?
Good. Very, very good. It's something that we've worked on for years. We've obviously had a relationship with ADNOC, think very highly of them. We've been working with them kind of behind the scenes to hopefully do some kind of deal. We finally got to the point where the fiscal terms really made sense and was competitive domestically. We have the flexibility to kind of do what we do also. I mean, it's very tough for us to go into a country and have our hands tied and not be able to utilize the people and the equipment and the services that we want. We've got an outstanding relationship with ADNOC. We've actually got a full staff that stood up over there right now in Abu Dhabi, and they're working directly with ADNOC on a day-to-day basis. They've been an outstanding partner.
I think it's going to be a great relationship, and it's really going to work out for all parties.
One of the questions we get from investors is what is the motivation or what is the benefit to ADNOC to bring in a partner like EOG? What's the opportunity set for them? It is a win-win kind of relationship.
Yeah. I think the one thing is when you look at the UAE., there's so much resource there. So much resource. I think they really want to pull the value forward, and they want to exploit that resource. They've done a really good job of trying to get up the learning curve with unconventional, but practice makes perfect. That's what I would say. I think that's really what we'll be able to bring to the table as a partner with them is we'll be able to kind of work side by side and bring them up to speed on true unconventional methods right now. It's tough. When you start looking at the way things are done unconventional, it can be uncomfortable. It'll take you a little while. I say you got to kind of walk people to water numerous times before they drink.
That is how unconventional works. I think that is how the relationship will work. It will ultimately benefit both of us because they will be able to walk away with the knowledge and the technology. We will be able to walk away with, obviously, the resource.
On a scale of maybe 1 to 10, what is your excitement about this opportunity in the UAE? Could this be a real needle mover for the company because you're a very big company?
Yeah. I don't know on a 1- 10. I mean, it's in the higher range, I would say, for sure, because it's an oil play. And to have an oil play of this magnitude with this much acreage and as much data as we actually have and actual production tests, that's half the battle. If you have that, it's very easy to refine your models unconventionally and really understand whether or not you've got a prospect or not.
Okay. Two final questions. What's the status of Beehive in Australia?
Beehive right now, the plan is still it's deferred. Honestly, we kind of knew in the background we had some of these other international opportunities that were coming to the forefront that were very exciting. Even more so with that opportunity, it's still an exciting opportunity, but it is a little bit more greenfield exploration. Also, we saw the cost structure down there in Australia. It really kind of got away from industry. I mean, rates on a lot of things have went up almost double. With it being kind of true exploration and the permit's still good till the end of next year and we've got some optionality, I think we felt better focusing in on more of the Middle East, Bahrain, and UAE and just deferring that project to a later day.
Yep. Maybe last question is investors are really excited about companies that are playing in the infrastructure, LNG, gas kind of space today. Could you maybe elaborate on your unique marketing agreement that you have with Cheniere to capture JKM pricing?
Yeah, absolutely. It is kind of coming in in tiers right now. Currently, we're producing 140,000 MMBtu to LNG and going offshore. That is linked on a monthly basis to either JKM or Henry Hub. Very unique agreement. That capacity actually goes from 140,000 MMBtu up to 420,000 MMBtu next year. If you just look at that from 2020 to 2024, just that 140,000 MMBtu has cumulatively added over $1.3 billion in revenue. It is an outstanding agreement. You can just imagine once it goes up to 420,000 MMBtu that is going to be exciting. In addition to that, we also have another 300,000 MMBtu that is going to be directly linked to Henry Hub that is also tied to the agreement. Actually, with Cheniere's outstanding performance, they have accelerated that into this year.
We're going to actually start seeing some of that 300,000 MMBtu a day come in then. Extremely excited. I call it our sweetheart agreement. I do not know if we're going to get another one like that out there, but we continue to look for ones that are as advantaged as that. Could not be any more excited about the relationship there with Cheniere.
Jeff, thank you so much.