Good morning. Welcome to the Third session of the Forty Second Annual Strategic Decisions Conference. I am Bob Brackett, co-head of Energy and Transition here at Bernstein. We are not expecting a fire drill or any sort of safety drill. If an alarm rings, please take it seriously. The primary exit is out the door to the back, down to my right, to the escalator area where you came up. If for whatever reason that is blocked, there are internal stairways right behind us. Out the door, choose one of them, go down, and follow the paths there. This is your conversation around the room. We have QR codes printed on these little blue pieces of paper. That gets you to the Pigeonhole app, allows you to type in your question, and I'll be seeing those on the screen. Absolutely encourage you to ask those questions.
While I'm waiting for all your great questions to come in, I'm going to follow a pyramid principle where we're going to start our conversation at a high level, talking about macro. We'll move on to strategy, then we'll kind of dig down into parts of the portfolio, and all the way into the operations. That's how we'll proceed. We'll kick it off by thanking Ezra Yacob, the Chairman and CEO of EOG Resources, to be with us, and I'll turn to join him. I was just checking my phone to see if there's a peace deal in the Strait of Hormuz. There may or may not be. It's sort of Heisenberg's peace deal. It both is and isn't. Talk to the Strait of Hormuz. How do you understand what's happening today?
Maybe we'll talk about what are some of those longer-term implications.
Yeah. I think the only way to do it is to be patient. Take a longer view, have a longer perspective on it, because otherwise, like you said, you're liable to get caught up in what appears to be kind of a every Monday and Friday difference of opinion and news flow. The conflict is certainly the most dramatic thing that's affecting our industry, quite frankly, since COVID, really. It's spilling over into the broader market. The way to think through these things is to realize what it is. There's a lot of volatility associated with in the here and now, but trying to reflect on what does it mean for fundamentals kind of longer term.
Taking a longer-term view, being diligent, being thoughtful, but also at the same time, being proactive and realizing what does this mean for fundamentals, and how do you orient your company to create additional shareholder value through the cycle?
It's been 90 days. It's a quarter, right? Are you surprised that price is not higher, not lower, that the world seems awfully complacent about the global petroleum system?
Yeah, that's where I think our surprise would lie at, is that after 90 days, I haven't seen a more dramatic kind of global coalition or cohort really responding to this. For a surprise to price in particular, no. Nothing really ever surprises me with price because you have so many nuances and speculations and things like that go on with it. The front month, obviously, is moving around pretty volatile, with a lot of volatility. The back of the curve has generally been more steeply backwardated. I think, when you look at fundamentals and what this means, you should probably see that firming up a little bit. The easy math, if you say 90 days now for the conflict, and conservatively, if we just say that maybe 10 million barrels a day has been offline, which is conservative.
If you do straight-line math and flip that means you've got two and a half, almost three years, where you need an excess of 1 million barrels per day to kind of fill in that hole. Well, pre-conflict, if you said that you were going to have an excess 1 million barrels a day of demand or supply, that would have a dramatic effect on pricing. More to the tune of what you're seeing in the back half of the curve. Again, that's how we kind of frame it up and that's why we continue to think about it. That's why I say, you don't want to be reactionary in the moment, but you do want to start to piece it together and what does it mean for fundamentals, and how do you incorporate that into a longer view?
That longer view, last year in a normal world, and there's never a normal world for oil, you couldn't really push oil much into the mid-50s. Part of the reason was you had strategic buying of Chinese. That looks genius now, buying at $60. We're going to come out of this crisis. We're going to have to refill, in theory, strategic inventories and commercial inventories. Is that a $70 put? Do we have a point where if oil gets into the $60s, states, nation states look and say, "Well, that's a bargain. I need to rebuild." That's a process that could take years.
Listen, coming on the heels of this conflict, I'm not sure if you have to see 60s to make that call. I think you're right. What China was able to do last year put them in a great position right now. I think you're seeing the U.S. lean into our SPR. I saw a headline today that we'd actually sent some of our shipments of SPR over to the Asian markets as well. No. I think strategically what you have is countries will definitely be refilling their SPR. Some countries will establish an SPR. That's going to provide that, along with a recognition of this convergence of energy affordability, energy reliability, national security, is definitely going to provide a bit of an oil price floor higher than mid-cycle prices, historic mid-cycle prices.
More than likely will create an environment where you've got asymmetric volatility to the upside. I think that's some of what sets up, obviously, you've got the whole of inventories to fill. You've got pre-conflict, you had a continuation of, let's say, strong, consistent demand. Not anything crazy, but a million to two barrels per day, per year. Not a significant amount of new supply. You had some spare capacity coming back, re-entering the market, and now you've got this extra layer of demand from the SPR. I do think it sets up, quite frankly, in the near to medium term, quite a strong pricing environment based off of fundamentals, less just speculation.
That comes to how you think about allocating capital. It's almost, we've lived in this world of $40, $60, $80, right? Everything's got to earn a good, in your case, double-digit return at $40. You can sort of plan around $60, and $80 is the dream. Now we're coming back down to the dream. Given the volatility, you hate to throw out processes all at once, how do you think about longer term? What's the right planning price for oil, and what's the right program?
Yeah. Again, this is a commodity business. It's a cyclical industry, though. Yeah, you feel good that you're seeing a line of sight where you've got some years now above mid-cycle pricing. In any commodity price cycle, that means that if you're going to spend a few years above, at some point, it'll come under. I'm not sure if to your question, we don't change the strategy of the company, which is measuring some investments at the bottom cycle, making sure we can create shareholder value through the cycle. That doesn't necessarily mean that we don't change how we manage in the moment, though. There are different things you want to do depending on if, let's just say, you're above or below mid-cycle pricing. Below mid-cycle pricing, it's a great time to expand the business.
Last year, we were able to execute on an acquisition, a small bolt-on acquisition, and expanded internationally for some concessions. We leveraged our strong balance sheet, our low breakevens, and stepped into some marketing agreements when others weren't available and we didn't see the competition out there. When you're above mid-cycle prices, you've got excess free cash flow. It's a great opportunity to maybe drill some of your exploration wells. The pricing makes that experiment a little more forgiving. It's an opportunity. During the last upcycle, we invested in some strategic infrastructure to help lower our breakevens during the downturns. You do recognize the moment that you're in and adjust some of the strategy to best position the company. Whenever you enter a different part of the cycle, you want to make sure you're positioning yourself to exit it as a stronger company.
It doesn't necessarily affect the long-term investment criteria that we have. Last thing we want to do is see that we're in an upcycle and ramp up production growth. Production growth makes you bigger. It doesn't necessarily make you better. What you want to do in these types of opportunities is continue to invest in a way. Investing in growth is fantastic right now, but you want to make sure that you're investing in a disciplined manner where you're still chasing margin expansion, not just from top-line revenue growth, but true margin expansion, where you're driving top-line revenue growth, but you're also lowering your operating expense as well. That is where you can really carry value and deliver value to the shareholders through this cycle.
You can commit capital to oil, commit it to gas, mostly commit it to a blend. Let's talk about Henry Hub. What is that range of outcomes for Henry Hub gas price? Don't depress me.
Yeah, this year, on the Q1 call, we actually announced that we are reallocating some of our gas investment this year right off the bat. With the divergence of prices, you've seen oil prices strengthen dramatically on the conflict. You've seen gas prices weaken a little bit throughout the year. We reallocated some of our dry gas drilling into some more liquids-weighted. It delivers about 2,000 barrels a day increased oil on the year and 6,000 barrels a day increased NGLs on the year. That's not to say that we're not constructive or bullish longer term on natural gas. We've captured this natural gas asset named Dorado in Southern Texas. It's an Austin Chalk and Eagle Ford play.
We think it's well positioned to supply both the upcoming LNG demand, which is coming on and increasing every day, but also, just in general, North American increase in electricity demand, a lot of that on the back of coal-fired power retirements. Those are two structurally bullish changes that go forward and provide a lot of upside to natural gas long term. We think historically, if you look at natural gas prices, Henry Hub, I should say natural gas prices, mid-cycle price range, maybe $3.50, $3.60, $3.70. We think these structural changes should increase that historic mid-cycle price range by maybe $1, or $1.50 or so. What we've done to orient ourselves is we have captured some LNG pricing through gas sales agreement to make sure we've got our gas going offshore.
That's been increasing over the last few years, and by the time it gets to 2027, we have a mix of basket pricing options that gets us about a BCF a day, just shy of about a BCF a day, going offshore by 2027. The other thing I would point out on natural gas going forward is it is difficult to forecast. Just because I said natural gas mid-cycle price range we feel is going to go up, it doesn't necessarily eliminate the volatility. When you think about natural gas, you need to think about natural gas plays and natural gas associated plays. You need to think about infrastructure, where that gas is versus where the demand is. You need to think about what is the oil price, because that contemplates how much associated gas there is.
When you're all said and done with that, you need to think about the weather. Which makes it a bit complicated. That's why when you're focused on natural gas, you need to make sure you're bringing forth the lowest cost gas you possibly can. In Dorado, we've been very strategic, very thoughtful, and very disciplined about the investment there, building out different parts of the infrastructure. When we flow those molecules in Dorado, the cash operating costs are about $1 per Mcf. Total breakeven on the play is about $1.40 per Mcf. That's why I say we think we've captured some of the best position and lowest cost gas in all of North America.
We had Kim Dang, CEO of Kinder Morgan, just before you. They're forecasting about 26 Bcf of gas demand growth out to 2030. My number's within one of that, would max within five or so of that. That's like adding two Haynesvilles. It's like adding a Permian dry gas worth. It's adding Appalachia. On the supply side, you see that resource is out there. I like your mid-cycle price, adding a $1.50 to where we've been.
Yeah, the resource in the U.S. is there. Now, the tricky thing is the infrastructure in place to get it places? There's a tremendous amount of gas in the Northeast, not a tremendous amount of infrastructure to get that down to some different parts of the demand center. Now, when you talk about that increase in demand, which we're right there in the same kind of frame, 3%-5% compound annual growth rate in North American demand. It's LNG, it's electricity from coal-fired power, electricity some due to data centers and AI.
You said coal twice before you said data centers. I think that's the first, probably the only at the conference.
Actually, that's because one of the reasons is in our base model, we have a range of what data centers and AI are responsible for, and it's actually not the main driver. It ranges in our model from somewhere to three to maybe as much as eight BCF a day in demand, but it's not nearly as significant as LNG, even just residential air conditioning or heating or anything like that. You also have another wave of petrochem, and then you also have Mexico exports as well, which increases that demand. Part of it is, the U.S. does have a robust amount of source. We don't have a robust storage anymore. Storage hasn't kept up with North American gas demand over the last 10 or 15 years. You do have a resource there.
It's funny, though, how much of that resource, and you picked out the Haynesville earlier, is actually controlled or owned by North American E&P versus international companies that have purchased some of the Haynesville to backstop some of their own supply for LNG. The historic kind of on/off switch in the Haynesville of a $4 per Mcf, it'll be interesting to see if that continues into the future or if that changes with different operator incentives.
A desire to better return through the cycle. Sort of the discipline that the shale oil companies learned can be transmitted to the shale gas companies.
That's right.
Speaking of which, I went through 1Q results, and the word units of barrels per day, BOE per day, doesn't show up till page five, but lots of percentages, and including commitments. I think the first number in your 1Q is, "We commit to return 70% of free cash flow to shareholders this year." Right? Kind of this idea, I hate the word windfall because of European regulators, but the idea of if there is a windfall, if we have a top of cycle price, let's give that back to shareholders. Talk to that philosophy.
Yeah, I think hopefully what comes across on that earnings deck is first title, first slide is shareholder value through the cycle. Part of that is capital discipline, part of it is operational excellence, a commitment to sustainability and culture. Those are the competitive advantages that drive EOG. It's driven us over the years to have a very low breakeven, have a very competitive, regular dividend, and that extends into our overall cash return strategy, which as Bob said, is a minimum 70% commitment to return free cash flow on an annual basis above and beyond that regular dividend, either in the form of special dividends or more recently, we've been leaning on share repurchases. In the last couple of years, in fact, at lower oil prices, that cash return was closer to about 90%-100%, some years, 100% exactly.
With these oil prices, we've kind of backed off of that a little bit, and we're saying 70%. If you look at the forecasted free cash flow and cash return at the strip price that we released with the first quarter call there in May, that forecasts about $6 billion of cash return to shareholders, which would be a record year for cash return, which we're excited to be able to deliver back to the shareholders, again, on an annual basis. Right now, when that cash return comes back, I think we still see a lot of avenue for share repurchases. I think the energy industry, while equities and the entire industry has moved up a little bit with the increase in oil prices due to the conflict, still a relatively light weighting in the S&P 500. Free cash flow yields still look very attractive at this point.
Really when we weigh our own measure of value, kind of an intrinsic value of the company, we still see a lot of opportunities in the stock. Well, we're very cognizant we don't want the share repurchase program to turn into a pro-cyclic model and remain very opportunistic. I think we've demonstrated over the past three years that we've been repurchasing stock, that we're in the market every day looking for opportunities, and we've done quite well with it. In the last three years, we've retired about 10% of the stock. We've invested about $7.1 billion in share repurchases, and we've done it at a price that I think is very compelling investment and very compelling value for the shareholders.
I remember times in the days of triple digit oil and growth, you'd have everybody at the company checking their shares. The irony here is we're in a high price environment. The shares have not responded to that. It's almost a blessing, right? We've almost conquered the pro-cyclical nature of buybacks, right? That gives you a chance to go out there and buy back more aggressively than if this was sort of a speculative pro-cyclical bubble.
Yeah. That's a silver lining to look at the share price not responding.
Fair
To the oil price market. Like I said, I think when we measure it, we try not to look at trading parameters or technical trading markers. We really look at it on more an intrinsic value basis. We measure the value of the company at a series of different pricing mechanisms. We try to evaluate the company's multiple. We look at industry's multiple and see if there are dislocations that are occurring, and continue to feel confident that when we are buying back stock, we can talk to the shareholder and say, "Listen, through the cycle, this is a compelling value and an investment opportunity for you.
There's sort of a corollary question that came in. Your stock has lagged the broader E&P index. I haven't verified that. Why do you think this has been the case, and how does that change in the future?
Yeah. I think the big thing for us is continuing to drive down the break-even cost, continuing to expand our margins, and proving up some of our exploration opportunities. The company has leaned in on building a natural gas opportunity, like I talked about earlier, a natural gas business underneath the umbrella of EOG. Some people have felt that we're leaning into changing the company from an oil company to a gas company, and that's not quite aligned with the strategy. Quite frankly, what we're seeing is when we can invest in opportunities based on a bottom cycle pricing of $45 oil or $250 natural gas, and we can create compelling returns in excess of 30% direct after-tax return, that is a very compelling investment opportunity.
We've been growing our natural gas business again into the emerging North American demand, while actually still growing our oil, the oil side of our business, quite frankly, in excess of what global oil demand has been growing recently. What we see is that puts us in rarefied air where we've got exposure to both North American dedicated natural gas plays, North American dedicated liquids plays, and both international conventional and unconventional assets for exploration upside. I think the strategy is working. When you look back at the last five years, we've been able to generate about $30 billion of free cash flow. We've returned about $25 billion of that free cash flow to shareholders and delivered over a 25% average return on capital employed.
In our mind, as long as we continue to focus on the business fundamentals, the macro environment, our market value will reflect the business value that we're creating over time.
To some degree this year. Coming into this year with more debt than you wanted in January turned out to be a blessing, right? Companies that were levered delivered quickly and outperformed, but that's a cyclical nature. That's not a structural nature. Another question, which I'll modify. A year ago, different hotel down the street, I asked you a question about how you think about M&A. The next day, you acquired Encino, which was a reasonably small acquisition relative to your cap, but still your largest in history. There's three questions here. One, how do you think about M&A?
Yeah. It was a great question last year, Bob.
I refuse to play poker with you.
It was a terrible answer, but for obvious reasons. Look, Encino was fantastic for us. We executed this acquisition in an emerging asset for us. It's one where we had established an organic acreage position. We drilled enough wells and proven the resource to ourselves, and it wasn't widely recognized, I'd say, as to the value that we'd actually captured there. Which put us in an advantaged position when negotiating with Encino. We're able to capture that asset, which kind of fit hand in glove with our preexisting acreage position. It gives us the scale that really fast-tracked that play from being an emerging to what we call a foundational asset, which gives us the scale, the economies of scale, the ability to capture operating advantages, things like in-basin sand, leverage water, leverage marketing agreements, and things of that nature.
We did it at an area at a time where we felt, pardon me, we were below mid-cycle prices, which gave us some confidence on the amount of production that we were paying for that maybe we didn't get it right in the short term, but over the long term, being able to step into some production at below mid-cycle prices would probably work out. We had identified a significant amount of upside, not only with the expansive acreage position, but with the operational momentum that we'd already captured. To date, we've already captured and exceeded our target on synergies, which was about $150 million. We've already reduced our well cost. We exited last year with a well cost of less than $600 per foot, which exceeds both legacy EOG and the legacy Encino acreage.
We've been able to utilize our technology, things like our production optimizers that we've rolled out to basically about 90% of the wells that we acquired in that transaction. We couldn't be happier with it. A lot of people have compared the way we executed that transaction to the Yates merger and acquisition of about a decade ago. I can't disagree with that. Both were emerging assets. Both were slightly underappreciated at the time by the Street. Both were privately negotiated, and we had a bit of a competitive advantage because of the data and knowledge base that we'd put together, beginning with an organic acreage footprint.
I've always understood your M&A strategy is the market's going to pay for flowing barrels what the market pays, that any premium you pay on a combination of flowing barrels and acreage accrues to the acreage, and then you got a bunch of locations that are burdened. Then you could get away with it, and I would argue the flowing barrels you got from Encino were fairly priced, and so therefore, the premium was reasonable. We just had last week, and I've got investors asking, a BLM sale in New Mexico in your neighborhood.
which was unproducing acreage, right? Just no flowing barrels. You saw companies pay up to $6 million a location to secure that stuff. What was your philosophy? I'm sure you were involved in looking at all of that stuff. Didn't see you winning many high bids at $6 million a location. One, yeah, what was your philosophy for that lease sale? Two, what is that lease sale telling us about inventory?
Yeah, the way we evaluate acreage or the acquisitions or undrilled acreage or anything else is, it starts with a returns framework. When I look at that, to your point on large-scale acquisitions, the bid-ask spread on producing barrels is low return. It's 10%-12%, something like that. That's kind of fixed. You really need to have either a low enough production that comes with an acquisition or a high enough upside and the ability to drill it quickly, you want to drill it quickly because it's such high return, to really make a compelling return argument there. The same thing applies for small bolt-ons or lease sales, quite frankly, is if you're going to spend money on it, I would think that you're going to want to drill it, you're going to need to drill it.
It should be moving to the front of your inventory. Just to continue to buy acreage, especially at high dollar cost, and say you're going to get to it a few years from now, that's not the most exciting thing for us. When we look at things like this most recent lease sale, we would evaluate it through that lens of returns. Not just direct cash on cash rate of return if I drill a single well, but how does that full cycle affect the corporate level returns? How does adding $6 million of land cost to each and every well going to affect the DD&A pool and the ability to generate earnings and income longer term?
$6 million per well at $100 per oil, and if you drill a $7 million well, you can make a good cash on cash return with an 87.5 NRI, but that's all embedded into the full cycle cost of your company. That's the level of details and the level of thought that we look at it as on full cycle returns. Now to the second part of your question, having a record-setting amount, I believe that's a record-setting amount for dollars per acreage. I think everyone knows how strong the Permian acreage is. It's stack play potential. There's a lot of different landing zones. Boy, that is a high dollar amount.
I think what it keys into is how precious Tier 1 acreage is in any of these basins, how important it is to be in the sweet spots of basins, and how, especially in the Permian, a significant amount of that Tier 1 acreage is really captured or held by only a handful of companies. That's why you're seeing. I think more interesting, I think, is not just the high watermark of that lease sale, but the wide range of pricing that was paid per acre, because that really tells you what the difference of quality is between Tier 1 to whatever you want to say, Tier 10.
Good
Acreage quality that there is.
I hope I never have to.
Depends on your tiers.
a report compiling 10 tiers worth of stuff. I've often described strategy as what companies refuse to do. What does EOG refuse to do?
Yeah. I think EOG refuses to be dogmatic, even with saying that we refuse to do something.
Refuses to refuse to do it.
Kind of a never say never type of mentality. I will say what we're committed to, and what you can count on, is a consistent strategy. Consistent observation of what's made a compelling investment opportunity, a successful company for over 30 years. It starts with what we talked about earlier, capital discipline. Capital discipline really is as simple to say, it's difficult to execute on, but it's no more difficult than making sure that your investment in each asset improves that asset every year. If the asset quality is starting to reduce, then you just need to pull back your investment there and allow your team time to work the problem and continue to increase the value of the assets. The second thing is operational excellence. It's empowering your employees to use data and technology, giving them the tools that they need to actually work the problems.
It's consistent commitment to exploration, organic exploration, and innovation on the operations side. It's a commitment to sustainability and safety. That's a very important way to create shareholder value. Last, and probably the most important driver of everything is nurturing the culture of the company. The culture at EOG is truly one of decentralization. That doesn't mean just physically having geographic offices and running satellite offices. What it means is empowering your employees in those offices, the employees that are closest to the business, the value drivers of the business, really empowering them to make decisions and have responsibility and accountability to fix issues when they see issues arising, to identify value drivers, opportunities to improve the value of the business, and encouraging them, giving them the responsibility to make those decisions and really drive the value of the business forward.
That's what's driven EOG's success for 30 years, and I think that's what will continue to separate us in the future.
We've got a ton of different questions on growth opportunities, and exploration, which pleases my heart. I'll start with a macro one. The consensus narrative is that oil shale growth opportunities in the U.S. have peaked, and growth, while good, will slow. Is that a fair assertion? Why? Why not?
Yeah. I think we've grown pretty aggressively in the last decade, 15 years. With any asset, whether it's conventional, but especially in unconventional, the more you grow, the steeper that decline rate is. What we've seen in recent years is the hole that you need to fill in on an annual basis is about 2.5 million barrels a day, plus or minus, just before you can start to maintain or grow above and beyond that. What's happened in the U.S. is, well, EOG has continued to explore. Sorry about that. We've talked about that. It's a core piece of our culture. The rest of industry has kind of slowed down.
It's starting to come back a little bit, but there's a long period of time where exploration was on the back burner, and that's created a scenario where we, as an industry in the U.S., are a little bit behind the curve on being able to continue to grow aggressively. That is the first piece of it. Is there the opportunity out there? Yes. I believe there fully is. I know for our company, we have a number of different domestic exploration opportunities that we're actually leasing and drilling on. We have been for the last couple of years, and we continue to do that. We continue to bring forth different projects. Again, you need to be committed to exploration, and it doesn't need to be just on a company level, but it really needs to be on an industry level.
That continues to mean reaching deeper, or further up the pipeline, so towards university, towards new hires, new entry into the industry. You need to encourage those employees to think about this as an exploration industry. At the end of the day, the oil business is, or the natural gas business, it is depleting assets. The only way to have a sustainable business model is to continue to drive exploration.
That brings us to EOG is getting extremely active in the Piceance. Can you share a bit on the revisiting of abandoned shale plays? How much runway does that give U.S. shale?
Yeah. I don't know if I can speak to U.S. shale, because again, it kind of goes to the last question on do companies have the culture. Do they understand how to explore anymore? Do they understand how to measure risk? Do they have the stomach to actually revisit areas and look for bypassed pay? The Utica is probably a better example I could rely on, where the Utica is a play that Listen, this thing was initially identified back in 2012 and 2013. Ourselves, we actually looked at the play. It was the third time we looked at the play that we actually started to take leases in it, in late 2019. We looked at it back in 2013 and 2014. We looked at it again in about 2016 and 2017.
Finally, when we revisited it in 2019, we revisited with a little bit of data, a little bit of technology in our approach, that really was an outgrowth of a small Woodford oil play that we had at the time. It was a geomechanical model, so looking at the way that the rocks break as opposed to purely focusing on the porosity. That actually unlocked the entire Utica for us. Yeah, I think there's potential. Listen, the best place is an old adage. The best place to explore for oil is where oil's producing. There's always going to be bypass pay there, and it's a matter of getting your cost structure right, utilizing new data and technology, continuing to reinvent some of these plays. That is definitely going to be able to unlock historically what's been bypassed pay going forward into the future.
I think there's a lot of potential there.
You didn't say anything specific about the Piceance. Moving on.
Yeah, we have a number of different exploration opportunities, both domestic and international. Trying to go down a checklist of exploration ideas for a company of our size, we'd potentially be here all day.
Well, we'll be here at least 50 more minutes. Considering the geopolitical backdrop, has Canada become a potential long-term attractive region for EOG? I remember when you guys were in Horn River.
Yeah, we were in Canada. Geopolitics is one of about four or five different variables, quite frankly. It's got to start with the subsurface, of course. Subsurface quality has to be, and this isn't just Canada, this is really anywhere. Maybe we'll narrow it down into international for the moment, but really it's got to start with subsurface quality. We've got to see, identify some sort of subsurface well productivity that's going to be additive to what we can identify domestically. The second piece is on the surface. Is it going to have an established oil field services sector? Now, that's for us. We prefer to have that. We're not of the size and scale where we're going to go into a frontier country and stand up an entire oil field services sector there.
We prefer to have access to high-quality equipment, high-quality oil field services, personnel, things of that nature. You need to have stable geopolitical. That is one of the keys there. You need to have also rule of law and things like that that you can count on. Then preferably, access to premium markets. That might be one of the headwinds for Canada in particular. Those are the things that we try to line up before we think about going international. To be perfectly honest, while there are rules and regulations here in the U.S., there is a fantastic, or I should say well-defined regulatory environment that you can navigate through, and we've been successful doing that. Going abroad, you really need to line up a number of different things.
Premium prices. Oil, it's hard to get a premium price on oil, ultimately. Gas, you can. There are local gas markets where you're competing with someone bringing in fuel oil, and suddenly you get quite a nice price. One of the two international regions where you have shale or unconventional assets is Bahrain. The other is UAE. We're on the cusp, perhaps, of hearing from you all on some of the early well results. Talk to those two opportunities and when you get comfortable, maybe with the subsurface.
Yeah. Briefly, before I go to those, I'd say, even on oil, Bob Brackett, we've got exposure to roughly 250,000 bdp that goes offshore from the U.S. Again, exposure to premium pricing there as well. It all depends on how strategic you are on the marketing. Again, those are opportunities that a lot of times we put together counter-cyclically. Now, as far as Bahrain and the UAE go, you're right. We entered both of those countries last year. Those, again, were some international concessions that we captured during a softer environment, which was great. Bahrain is a horizontal, unconventional tight gas sand. In the UAE we've got a horizontal oil shale, maybe a little bit similar to the Eagle Ford is the way to think about that one. We have drilled wells now in both plays. We anticipate having production sometime this year.
We're excited about the opportunities. The UAE is actually an opportunity, similar, not dissimilar from the Utica. It's an opportunity that we've been looking at for a number of years. We've been engaged with ADNOC off and on probably since about 2019, trading technical notes on the resource, and we're excited to have the concession that we received there. It's a 900,000-acre concession, like I said, unconventional horizontal oil. Then Bahrain, a little bit different. Obviously, it's an island nation. It is an onshore play, so scale is one of the things that we're looking at there. In both countries, we've been happy with the access to oil field services, infrastructure, especially in the Bahrain side as an established producing, and we actually have production already established in Bahrain, legacy production that we're operating.
Our newer operated wells, again, I think we'll get some production on this year that we'll be able to talk about.
There's two things you're extrapolating. You're going to take those early well results against the body of knowledge you have and think about where they could go. Right? They're going to go up to the right. Those type curves will improve. The other thing you're extrapolating is the cost structure. The cost for these first two wells, it was a fortune, they were bespoke, they're one-off. That'll come down. If those intersect in a favorable place, you move forward?
Along with the operating environment. During the exploration phase, you're right. We're testing our subsurface model, which both of these resources have been drilled horizontally and tested hydrocarbons to surface. That's one thing that we're looking to confirm is what does our targeting, our completions technology look like. Do we get the uplift that we anticipate? You're right, we're evaluating the access to the oil field services and our ability to drill and complete in a costly manner. The other thing we're evaluating is just the operating environment, the regulatory environment, the rule of law, the relationship with the national oil companies. In a lot of ways, the conflict has sped up the learning on that. Obviously, it's kind of stress tested our relationship with the national oil companies there, and we couldn't be happier with it.
It's been very good, very transparent communication with both companies, and so that's gone a long ways towards giving us the confidence that we selected the right partners.
The UAE saw your early results and left OPEC? Right?
Let's not get quoted on that.
No.
Yeah. We don't really have any comments on that, quite frankly. I think that decision was maybe one that was speculated on by a number of people for the last few years. Certainly they've identified they have a desire to grow some of their unconventional resources, and I think that's one reason we were able to partner with them.
If I think, your definition of a foundation asset, in my interpretation is you want to park a frac crew there year-round, and you want that frac crew pushing through roughly 100 wells. Right? Therefore, probably supported by three to four drilling rigs. If you're kind of putting through 100 wells, you're approaching $1 billion a year of CapEx in that asset. Roughly. Right? Is that the scale?
Yeah.
Is the goal for the international to become a foundational asset?
The goal is for the international plays to become foundational assets. I'm not sure if the CapEx numbers work out that way for every one of our assets. You're right, foundational is to have a consistent frac fleet is the easiest way to think about it. We've talked about this before. In any of these unconventional resource plays, you get a step change in capital efficiency when you can run consistent drilling rigs, and then you get another one when you can operate consistent frac fleets. Anything above that, there are obviously incremental gains, but that's when you can feel confident about putting in some infrastructure. I mean things like water lines and sand and things of that nature. That's really what drives the economies of scale.
For any of these unconventional plays, including international, you essentially wells are short cycle, but these plays are relatively long cycle when you get a play up and running. You need to essentially build a virtual manufacturing plant in the field, then you can start to rinse and repeat and reiterate with data and technology and make the wells better and drive down costs through those economies of scale that I'm talking about. That would be the hope that we can early on test our model, our forecasted model here, and have line of sight to be able to turn these things into, not just competitive, but really more than competitive, more than additive to the existing inventory base that we have in the company.
As a follow-up to your exploration comments, is EOG likely to entertain the potential to go back to the Gulf of Mexico and the Deep Gulf?
Yeah, not the Deep Gulf, really. Definitely, what we've done in Trinidad over the 30, almost 34 years we've been there is we have developed an expertise in that region as shallow water operators. We did used to be, back in the 90s and the early 00s, involved in the Gulf of Mexico in the shallow water offshore. That would be a heavy ask, a heavy lift to get us to reenter there. We've maintained an area of expertise down in Trinidad. Not only do we have exceptional subsurface knowledge, but because of our cost structure and the way that we operate, we've got a bit of a competitive advantage in that region.
To try and step up into an area in the shallow water of the Gulf of Mexico, I do think there's opportunities to bring technology that's been developed in the deep water and the ultra deep water that hasn't been revisited necessarily or applied back to the shallow water in the Gulf of Mexico. That's probably right now better left suited to the operators that are in the region.
Think about Trinidad Tobago. You're adjacent to Venezuela. You've got the Orinoco River there just piling sediments out into the basin. Any interest in Venezuela?
Yeah. That goes back to geopolitical stability and rule of law. There's a lot of potential there. Everybody knows, obviously, it's a resource-rich country, but it's too early to tell for us. Quite frankly, we're very happy with where we're at in Trinidad. Like I said, we do have some shallow water expertise that would potentially translate over there, but at this point, we're a long ways from feeling that that's a compelling opportunity right now.
I want to come back to something we discussed in the past, which is well records in the U.S. are public data. Everybody with a couple clicks can pull up a well result, AFEs, well budgets or not. Unless you disclose well budgets, which you're not going to do, there's this tension between companies that drill for the best well, the best IRR, and companies that are drilling for the best NPV of a block, a cube, a section. You've adjusted EOG's strategy versus some of your predecessors, focusing more on a blend of IRR plus NPV. Talk to that philosophy.
Yeah, that's exactly right. The best example is in the Delaware Basin in the last few years. Since industry's kind of high cost watermark of 2023, in the Delaware Basin, we've reduced our well cost about 20%. What that means is when you drop your well cost about 20%, you can realize all that on just increased returns, or especially in a basin like that with an immense amount of resource potential, you can go back and reevaluate different landing zones, different spacing potentially, and see if you're really optimized between returns and NPV. That's constantly what we do in these shale plays is we're constantly trying to balance between your returns and your resource or your NPV on really a per acre, a per drilling unit basis. I think that's exactly right. We still start with returns-focused investment focused on bottom cycle pricing.
We want to measure every one of our investments on the bottom cycle. That's how we have confidence that we can create shareholder value through the cycle. We also measure that investment. If you only do that, you might be leaving something on the table. Look at bottom cycle pricing we use is $45 oil and $2.50. Well, we are roughly double that today on the oil side, not on the gas side. Is that the right development for where we're at today if you're in an established field or an established play? We look at our investments. We begin with the bottom cycle pricing on a returns hurdle of 30% direct after-tax rate of return. We also measure our development plans at a series of mid-cycle prices. Less on strip prices.
We look at NPV, we look at time to payout versus, say, mid-cycle prices and, quite frankly, spot prices and just see. To be perfectly honest, if you were drilling just a 50%, 60% rate of return well at that bottom cycle prices, at today's strip prices, those wells would pay out in a few months. Well, is that really the right approach? Again, in an area where you've got such rich resource, you're leaving so much behind no matter what you do. You need to think about those incremental barrels. What's the incremental finding and development cost on each of those barrels that you can bring forth?
Maybe in our last two minutes, what ultimately is the value proposition for owning EOG stock?
Yeah, the value proposition is just what I alluded to. It's shareholder value through the cycle. That's what we're focused on. We're not a company that you should expect is just going to lean in heavily when you see a price signal. We're going to focus on the fundamentals. What is supporting the pricing there, and what can we do to continue to improve each and every year in every single one of our assets? We want to focus on expanding margins and lowering the break-even costs. The way that we do that is the things that I started with at the beginning, capital discipline. That's it.
Investing with an eye on returns, realizing that this is a commodity-based business, and so measuring returns, not at strip prices, not at the high end, but you always need to be cognizant of what your returns are going to look like at the bottom cycle. That doesn't mean that's the end-all be-all for your investment, but you definitely want to measure it and keep that front of mind. You want to invest in your assets to make sure that they're improving each and every year, and you want to backfill that inventory through exploration. Utilizing the data and technology that you collect to drive operational excellence, not only on lowering sustaining well costs, but also on capturing new resource, which we were able to do last year through a variety of ways. Not only organic exploration, international concession capture, but also some strategic small bolt-on and large acquisitions.
The third thing is remaining committed to safety and environmental performance, being a leader in sustainability. The last, again, is nurturing the culture of the company. That's where it all begins. It's the culture of the company that is the real competitive advantage. It has been for 30 years. It's really focused on organizing and running a decentralized company that allows the employees to focus on the task at hand, which is, at the end of the day, pretty simple. It's creating more oil and gas for less costs, that's it.
I thank you, Ezra. I thank you, audience.