Thank you for joining me.
Thank you.
Okay. Great. Thank you so much for joining us. We are here with two of the leading gas companies in the US, Chesapeake Energy and EQT. Mohit, Jeremy, thank you so much for joining us. And we also have Sam here with us, who's our head of gas research, who'll be co-moderating the panel with me, Umang Choudhury. So thank you so much again for doing this. I'm sure gas is so much topical right now, especially the macro, so we'll get a lot out of this from our discussion perspective in the next 30 minutes. So with that, Sam, maybe you wanna kick us off with the macro questions?
Yes. And I have to start with production. I don't know if you guys were here when we had our first panel at that ungodly early hour, but one thing that we discussed is we sort of have an idea of what's gonna happen with demand, not a lot of demand growth in the U.S. for gas this year, and a decent amount of demand growth in 2025. So everybody's thinking about how we transition, and even from a price perspective, if we think, well, if there's no demand growth, weak prices this year, a lot of demand growth in 2025, stronger prices that year, how do we get from here to there? And our view is this is a timing issue, and in particular, a production timing issue.
At the end of the day, if production rises ahead of that demand growth, why do you need the rally in the first place, right? So production levels have been extraordinarily high. I wanna ask both of you, what is your view on, on these high levels of production, and how do you think that evolves over the course of this year, and based on that, what is your outlook for the market for 2024 and 2025, and how we transition that?
Yeah. Maybe I'll go first. Well, thanks for having us here. It's good to be here, first week of January, and hear everybody's thoughts and share our thoughts as well. Onto your question. So yeah, when you start looking at the production numbers around 105-106 BCF/d, it has surprised a lot of people to the upside. But when you start looking at the constituents, so Permian, it had some new pipelines come on, and what happens in the Permian associated gas, immediately those pipelines get filled up in the northeast in the Marcellus. We did this within our portfolio where we had backend loaded a lot of the TILs and deferred a lot of production into 4Q just because that's when you traditionally find that the pricing is stronger once you get off the shoulder season.
We had quite a few TILs that we brought on. So there's a lot of flush production that has come on in the northeast, but as you'd expect, within the next few months, that should start to taper off. And then the third thing I would say is Haynesville has been fairly resilient as well. When you look at the production from Haynesville, even though the rig counts have come down, the production quite hasn't rolled over. Now, if you ask why, 'cause it traditionally takes about six to nine months cycle time before, you know, when you start doing the reduction in activity before it shows up in the production, we're kind of at the cusp of that beginning to show up. So our expectation is that Haynesville should trough in Q1 this year.
It should be happening in real time as we sit here and talk about it. So when you roll all those things up together, the production has to come down. The market is clearly oversupplied when we think about it from the demand side, with the Exxon announcement, perhaps Golden Pass getting delayed into 2025. So that obviously has a demand impact. Then storage is full, close to full, and then the winter hasn't quite shown up. So when you put all this together, yes, it makes for a setup where oversupplied demand hasn't quite shown up and/or gotten delayed. So it'll make for 2024 that could begin to look a little bit how 2023 did. And I'm sure we'll dive into that, but maybe I'll try with you.
Yeah, I think we're generally pretty aligned in just, like, structurally how we think about it. I think importantly as you think about forecasting supply and where inventories go, we don't like to take Appalachia specifically. We don't see a structural change. I think if you look at what happened in Q3 where you had very weak pricing and storage pretty full, TILs were delayed, some of them pushed off into 2024. When you couple that with already what you just said, Mohit, where there's a seasonal kinda ramp, it's not the first year that's happened, but you see a lot of production hit all at once.
If you were to just extrapolate that forward and hold it flat, that paints a very different picture than I think the reality that we expect, which is that it returns more to, like, a structural level of 34 and a half, 35 Bcf/d in basin. You probably see that happen kinda late Q1 where you really kinda come back to those levels. That's what we've seen in the past. But again, I think to your point, when you couple that with what's happening in the Haynesville, you're kind of at that point where you've been flat for a couple months. You know, rig productivity has improved in the Haynesville in the last couple years.
I think that's probably what skewed assumptions a little bit in terms of where rigs were, where they fell to, and where they sit today, the ability to hold some of that flat relative to what you might have seen a couple years ago, but I think, you know, by the end of Q1, if you see Appalachia back to historic levels, if you see the Haynesville rolling, certainly constructive weather in the for the rest of winter would help, but I think that paints a very different picture as you look towards, like, October balances in 2024 than what you have seen, but I think what's really interesting about what's happening this year though too is I think that if, if gas were $4 in 2024, I think you see a lot more activity.
And so the 2025 story that you talked about, Sam, would probably be a lot more muted. I think the longer prices stay lower, it just holds back activity. And to your point, because the delay time of whether it's six months, 12 months, where you see, like, real production response to higher prices, I think it actually sets up an environment in 2025 that probably increasingly gets tighter the longer you hold at really low levels. I think whether it's a private or a public, you know, you're gonna be more delayed and more disciplined, especially after what happened 12 months ago, to adding back activity. So if that activity add is not mid-2024, maybe it's the end of 2024, 2025, you just have a bigger air gap, an imbalance in supply and demand as you get into 2025.
So, you know, I think we remain really constructive. I think to Sam's point, it's really a timing question and when that imbalance shows up. But, you know, isn't it, I guess, as we were talking about before you walked up here, what's interesting when it comes to modeling gas inventories and supply and demand. It's, call it 100 BCF a day in the market. If you're off 2% in your model, which is kind of a rounding error in the grand scheme of things given all the uncertainty, 2%, 2 BCF a day over a year, that's almost 700 BCF a day without any other price movement that kinda helps rebalance. That's the difference between a very bullish market, a very bearish market, or vice versa. So, you know, we've talked about our view that, like, volatility will be increasing.
I know you guys have talked about that too. I know a lot of other operators kinda share that view. I think it's gonna be increasingly hard to predict when this is gonna happen because the timing mismatch, what happens with weather and these different things that either rapidly tighten or rapidly loosen the market. But we remain pretty constructive though. I think 2024, at least through most of the summer, is probably probably pretty loose.
Forward for calculating time, you're now what, between 350, 360 or so? Are you bullish relative to that?
From our perspective, I mean, when you start looking at the breakevens, there will be a lot of production that gets brought on at those kind of prices if those prices hold. The strategy for us is to be LNG ready. And what that means is when you start looking at Golden Pass, you look at Corpus Christi Stage 3, you look at Plaquemines. So where we are exporting about 14 BCF a day today, there's about 7 BCF a day of LNG demand that's coming by 2025, right? So that thesis stays intact. The timing might slip a little bit 'cause projects, but once they are going in the ground, that steel is going in the ground, we know that project will come online. We know that that demand will show up.
Structurally, what it does is to go from 14 to 21 BCF a day. That's a pretty marked improvement in a new source of demand. Then when you start adding up the other projects which are in the queue as well, I mean, there's some estimates which get it up to almost 30 BCF a day, so in the midterm, I would say the thesis is still intact. What has kind of derailed it in the near term is this winter just hasn't shown up, but we knew that that could happen. That's why we ran our business in a way where leverage levels are low. We are fairly well hedged. We have managed our portfolio to be robust with low cost structure where, you know, we can withstand all of this. The intent is to create long-term value.
The way you do it is, as these ebbs and flows happen, you make sure you keep a pristine balance sheet, make sure you keep a good hedge book, and be committed to returns to shareholders, which, you know, as if, if I can talk a little bit about that, I mean, we have a base dividend that we pay $2.30 per share every year, which we have been growing over time. That's sacrosanct for us. Then we have a procyclical variable dividend. So as we make more money in an upcycle, we pay a variable dividend. And then opportunistically, when we are in the downcycle, we are doing buyback.
So the intent is, when you look at those three different levers and you average through them from a shareholder perspective, irrespective of which part of the cycle, whether it's in the upcycle or in the downcycle, there is quite a bit of return that's coming to the investors, which traditionally, if you think about E&Ps, we just haven't done a very good job providing that return back to the shareholders. And that's a lesson that's been learned. And we are committed to our shareholder return program, again, through the cycles, just managing all of this. So despite what's happening in the macro conditions, having a portfolio and a company which is set up to deliver returns to the shareholders.
I mean, I guess, Sam, to answer your original question on just, like, where does gas need to be in 2025, I guess, one, I would expect it to overshoot to the downside and to the upside as the market tries to rebalance and find equilibrium. You know, when we think about our base business and really stepping back and saying, like, if we're competing as an industry for dollars from other industries where, like, take real estate for an example, like, if I pay $1 billion for a hotel like this hotel, I need to make $100 million a year to get a 10% on leverage return, right?
So if you're, you know, if you're paying that for one of our businesses, there's a certain level of free cash flow you need as a yield every single year. And that's totally disconnected to, like, what's a single well IRR. So, like, for EQT, we start producing cash flow, free cash flow, like $2.50 gas. And for each one of our, you know, all of our businesses, when we do the math, you need about $1 of margin to really generate, like, a 10% WACC. So call it $3.50 is embedded, at least as we look at our stock today, assuming kind of unlimited inventory.
If you look at, in our view, like, the marginal cost of supply in the Haynesville, you need, like, $3.25-$3.50 gas in maintenance mode in that box to just hold it flat and be free cash flow neutral. So you add a dollar on top of that, I think you're well into the $4 range to really justify consistent, like, returns on shareholder capital. So to accelerate development of an asset like that, I think in our view, you need gas, you know, well above that. And so I think if you look at Haynesville-specific assets, as we've looked at it from an M&A perspective, if you look at some of the publicly traded, Haynesville assets, you see that borne out, you know, you need nearly $4 gas for some of those just to start producing cash flow.
So if I'm an investor and saying, "I'm gonna put money into this box, and I need to get my money back before the asset's depleted," is 10% even high enough, I think, is a fair question. That's, you know, 10 years to get my money back, and then I start earning real return after that. So I think in our view, I mean, I think you need well into the $4 gas price range. I think a single well IRR, even when we look at ourselves, we'll say if we need, it's almost 100% IRR at the, you know, at the wellhead. So we don't run our business based on, like, wellhead IRRs.
We think increasingly that's irrelevant, because investors are holding companies to account for, like, earn me a cost of capital on my shareholder base, not on your wellhead return. It's two totally different things. So I think we have probably a higher view of where gas needs to be certainly to see a production response that's really sustainable.
Thank you.
A lot to unpack there, to be honest. Maybe let's start with 2024, right? Last year in 2023, one of the concerns which investors had was, like, "Hey, our gas prices have fallen off a lot, but supply response hasn't been that quick," right? It took nine months to 12 months for the supply response to show up. And we effectively were looking for a supply response based on activity reductions, late in the middle of last year. So as you think about your expectations from industry activity for 2024, given where we are on gas prices, where do you think that lies, one? And then two, how do you think about your own capital investments, right, within this, you know, more tepid gas price outlook in 2024 in theory? Maybe Jeremy, you wanna start first?
Yeah. I'll go first this time, so when you think about our business, you know, we're running three rigs to hold almost six and a half Bcf a day flat.
Right.
So it's over 2 BCF a day per rig. So incredibly efficient. If we were to drop activity as a business, we're dropping a third of our rigs. So we're not gonna do that. And when you step back and think about just gas supply in the U.S., you have the Permian, which is free supply. You have Appalachia, which is cheap baseload supply. Then you have to think about the Haynesville as being like a peaker plant. It can ramp quickly. It can decline quickly. You know, you saw that play out last year in terms of where rig activity shifted. I think for EQT, running a business where we're drilling, you know, 300-400 thousand lateral feet kinda per development run, you know, that takes long-term planning. You don't start and stop that.
We're running the business kinda like you see some of the large Permian operations. You know, you commit to it. You have a very low-cost structure, and you can do that consistently through the cycle. I think you should expect us to run a just consistent, predictable, repeatable program, kinda as we've messaged publicly so far. I would expect, you know, that as we think about it, and as you saw last year, the Haynesville probably. I think in the gas and price environment, decline further. But you know, I probably looked ahead more to answer that. I would expect capital investments into more marginal plays to be pushed off in at least another year at this point.
Okay. Mike.
Yeah. From our perspective, the overarching theme is we want to keep the pace of activity somewhat steady 'cause every time you hit the start, stop, start, stop, it's inefficient, right? 'Cause every time you're demobilizing rigs, there's inefficiency and value leakage that begins to happen. Same thing with frac spreads. I mean, you don't want to bring them on and then have them two months later on that they're releasing them. So the end goal is to try and keep as steady as you can. So we are running about five rigs. We are running five rigs in the Haynesville. We are running four rigs up in the Marcellus. You should expect us to continue to run the same. The other lever that we have in the equation is what do you do with the frac crews?
If you can reduce the number of frac spreads that you're running, what it does is immediately it increases your cycle time, right, 'cause it takes you a little bit longer to bring those wells online. When you think of the capital spend between drilling and completions, if you delay the completion spend, that has a bigger impact 'cause that is the bigger cap as well. If you're trying to reduce your in-year capital expense, playing with the frac spreads, and that's some of the iterations that we are working through for our 2024 plan. We'll issue the guidance come February at earnings for what the plan is for 2024.
But we'll play with the cycle times, how long it takes to build to bring those wells online and what the cycle times are and how much is the working inventory of wells that we are working through. So that's one part of the answer. The second part, I would say, you don't want to compromise your ability to 'cause we, as we discussed earlier, and Sam asked this question, that we think from a macro perspective, the demand is coming. What you don't want to do is compromise too much of a productive ability to grow into that demand when it shows up 'cause if you start ramp hitting the brakes too hard, then you can go into a trough, which when the demand shows up, you're still trying to climb back out of that trough.
You want to avoid that as well. So it's a little bit of a push and pull, trying to manage that. Yes, the market is oversupplied. We need to reduce. We are doing that. Others are doing. You're doing that, and other companies are trying to do that too. It needs to happen. The market is clearly sending us that signal. But at the same time, try not to compromise your ability to grow into that demand, which will show up. Yeah.
Now, I wanna turn a little bit into risk management, and then Umang will follow up with balance sheet goals. But you both have mentioned in the past, and Jeremy just mentioned now, how volatility is here to stay. So I wanna hear from you how you think about your hedging strategies.
Yeah. I guess I'll go first, Kendra. So, you know, as you think about hedging, I mean, the purpose of hedging is obviously just risk mitigation. And so the question is, like, what is the risk in your particular business you're trying to protect against? I think historically, when so much of the market was high was really high yield, it was really trying to protect, you know, the balance sheet. And you know, as you look at our businesses today, back to investment grade, you guys have little to no debt at this point. There's not really a need to hedge for, you know, like, financial protection in the same way. So it's more of hedging to probably reduce volatility and increase certainty. But the other piece that comes into that is just what's your cost structure?
And for us, again, it just comes down to, like, on an unhedged basis, before you add that, what's that gas price where you start producing cash flow or, you know, start bleeding out? You know, if you step back and look at the last couple of years, like 2020 during COVID, you had gas settle at about $2. Like, I think, Sam, you'd know better than I would probably, but that's one of the lowest settles probably in recent decades for just a whole year. So when we think about, you know, our base business producing cash flow at $2.50 or above, and every dollar above that's about $2 billion of kind of free cash flow after tax, we just wanna make sure that really in any environment we can produce free cash flow. So when we look at our business and say, "Okay.
If you just ran a $2 case, how much do we have to hedge?" Call it between $3.50-$4 as a floor to make sure that down to $2 we can produce free cash flow or be free cash flow positive. For us, that's call it 25%-30% of our total production. Hedging beyond that, in our view, doesn't really seem to have a great purpose because, in effect, what you're doing is if you say, "you know, a lot of people like to talk about what's my view on price," and they talk in averages.
I think we look at it in the world of high volatility, and we say, "Well, if gas falls to $2, and that's kinda your low point, but the curve was very asymmetric to the upside and also increasingly unpredictable, why would we hedge more than we have to and cap asymmetric upside," right? And so what we're trying to do is keep as much of that exposed while making sure that in any environment we can consistently produce durable cash flow, which is why it ultimately comes back to, like, having the lowest cost structure possible is what really allows you to do that. If our cost structure instead of being at $2.00-$2.50, we were at $3, we might have to hedge twice as much, right?
And so having a high cost structure, in theory, that gives you more operational flexibility like, leverage and exposure to gas prices. In reality, it makes you hedge more, which means you actually have less upside. And I think you realize, on average, below strip in the future. So we wanna hedge as little as possible. I think if we saw our cost structure come down, which is what we expect, we think it goes from, like, $2.50-$2.60 down to $2.30, just as we have gathering rates, contractually declined, some other agreements we signed recently come in and improve our margins, you know, we probably hedge even less than that. And so it allows us to have a business that down to $2, we're producing cash flow, and if gas is $6, we're realizing almost all that upside.
We're trying to sort of evolve our hedging strategy based on how we've sculpted our business, the profile of our balance sheet, our credit ratings, and really provide what we think is the best risk-adjusted exposure to the commodity. There's different ways to go about doing that. A lot of it comes down to the assets, contract structures. But that's at least the way we look at it, at least kinda through the end of the decade.
Yeah. Our approach is fairly similar. So we have a program. We call it Hedge the Wedge. The way I would explain it to you is, let's say in a typical year, you have a $1.5 billion capital program. Loosely, use a $10 billion market cap. You're spending essentially 15% of your market cap that you're redeploying back into the business. Now, I'm spending those dollars now. It takes about nine months, six to nine months, for that production to come online. I don't know what the prices would be six to nine months from now. So what we do is we'll be 50%-60% hedged in the first quarters, and then we do it on a rolling eight-quarter basis.
And that wedge, the percentage of the wedge that's hedged keeps going down, almost mimicking a new well wedge as it comes online. The intention is when that production does come online, I want some certainty on that return, that the capital that I sunk in six to nine months ago. And what we have done, as you know, prices spiked up in the last 12-18 months or 24 months, we shifted quite a bit from having straight swaps to starting to do collars 'cause we were starting to see that asymmetric skew and skews became so attractive that we could monetize the calls and then use that to buy puts, essentially kind of putting these collar structures, which protect your downside.
So when you look at our hedge book, we have our downside protected in the low to high threes per MCF, and then we have sold calls in the high fours. Essentially, what it allows us to do is selling the upside and using that premium to pay for the downside protection. And for us, from our perspective, that's prudent risk management. And I'll link it back to what I said earlier. You don't want to have to start, stop activity 'cause hedging is an important part of it 'cause what it allows you to do is have steady cash flows, which allows you to keep the activity level somewhat stable and not having to, you know, demob and mob and keep having to do it again and again.
Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting point on the collars 'cause we've done the same thing. I'm glad you brought that up. But as you do that, what's interesting about, you know, 'cause you're putting on these collars through the options market, and if you wanna capture some of that call skew, which I think we all agree should show up in time, you don't see the skew develop, like, far out in time based on the way options are priced so much. So I think the timing at which we hedge, it's something that I think is evolving right now, but you're not gonna see, like, material call skew two years out in the options market, like you will if it's more in, like, the next 12 months. So I think the timing of execution will probably evolve at the same time.
But, I mean, look, if you say gas is, you know, $3, would you really hedge 250 by 350 if you think the downside's $2 down but the upside's 2 to $3 up?
That's right.
You symmetrically hedge that. That doesn't really seem to make a lot of sense to us. So we will be more opportunistic and disciplined and patient, I think, trying to find those opportunities where that skew develops. I think what happened towards the end of 2022 is a good example of that where, you know, I think gas in Q1 of 2023 was trading at, like, $8. We were putting in collars of, like, a floor, a costless collars, $4 or $5, a ceiling of $20. And so you had, like, $3 down and multiples of that on the upside. I think you'll see, you know, there will be times where that comes back into the market again.
I think that's the time where we look to really lean in on hedging and try to capture some of that asymmetry to the extent we can.
Maybe turning to the balance sheet, and I think this is a very important part of the gas ecosystem, financial gas companies right now, given the volatility in gas prices. Starting with Mohit, obviously, Chesapeake has a very good balance sheet today, right? You have sold all your non-core assets in the Eagle Ford. You're sitting with a very big net net cash position.
Right.
How, like, how much cash do you want to have in your balance sheet, right, to have that optionality to do things, quantitatively be it share repurchase or maybe even acquisitions if that opportunity arises?
Yeah. The way we think about it, there's no minimum cash balance. It's more driven by liquidity. How much access do you have to liquidity? So whether it's undrawn revolver, how much cash do you have on hand? That's one metric. And the other one, we have been public about this. We don't want our net gearing or net debt to EBITDA to go above one turn. And the thinking loosely behind that is if gas prices collapse tomorrow, we shut down activity. So we shut down expenditure, but then your business is generating X amount of EBITDA. Essentially, within a year, you're able to pay down your indebtedness.
And if you keep that as a firm boundary condition, which we do, one turn, net debt to EBITDA as a target while still having access to cash, I mean, it from the cash perspective, for the longest time, it was not generating any interest, right? But things have changed. I mean, as the Fed has increased the interest rate, it's become an asset for the first time in a long period of time. And we are generating quite a bit of interest income on the cash that we're sitting on. So that part feels good. The expectation is, you know, as we lay out our plan for 2024, how much we intend to spend, you know, what else do we want to do with that capital? I mean, we have been active.
We have done a pretty significant buyback program. We bought about $1.5 billion worth of our stock in the last, you know, couple of years, which that part feels good in terms of returning it back to the shareholders. It's underpinning our base dividend that we pay. So that's an outlay of $300 million for the year that services our base dividend as well. And thereafter, you know, the as and when opportunity has presented itself, we have been out there acquiring leases within our existing footprint. And whenever prices do weaken, as we are seeing weaker natural gas prices, it's an opportunity to pick up leases at pretty attractive rates, which end up adding NAV in the long term. So we've been very active doing all of that.
Again, when you have access to cash and liquidity, more importantly, it allows you to be able to be opportunistic that way.
Jeremy, let's bring you into the conversation. On the balance sheet point, your focus is to take the balance sheet down to $3.5 billion from a net debt perspective. How do you prioritize your plans around debt reduction versus share repurchase and opportunistic share repurchase? And then, I guess, to tie that point together is also the fact that you have this hedging program, which basically gives you downside protection and locks in your base cost, but you have also been opportunistic to lock in further hedges, beyond the 25%-30% at times, right? When you think about that glide path to that $3.5 billion, do you plan to hedge more right now and then reduce the hedge ratios over time, or does that 25% number become a more like a static number looking two, three years out?
Yeah. I mean, it evolves in time. If you look at our hedge book this year, kinda through October, from, like, January through October, we're hedged 45%-50%, you know, more front-end weighted on the year, on a monthly basis. So it was really meant to lock in that cash flow and kind of that glide path down towards our debt targets. You know, I think, you know, for us, being able to take a more opportunistic approach to hedging as you get into a much more uncertain, much more volatile world, it really has to be underpinned by having a fortress balance sheet.
So getting the debt down to that target level, and I think we'd be open-minded about taking it even lower in time, because inevitably, what it allows you to do in a cyclical industry, it's always been cyclical, always will be cyclical. We've seen that over and over. It's like every two to three years, there's a phenomenal buying opportunity, then the stock rips, then it falls right back with commodity prices. I think if you have an approach that, like, when I have cash, I just have to invest it, if you're an investor, that's a terrible business model, right? I mean, if you're earning fees on it, I get it, right? But if you're saying, "I just wanna focus on long-term capital, returns," thinking everything is always a good investment all the time is not the right approach to have, right?
So I think having the oil-like cash is optionality. And if you're buying something with cash during a down cycle, you're talking about earning two, three, four times your money on that investment. If you're just saying, "I'm gonna take a programmatic approach to buying back shares," it's always a couple % accretive. I mean, how many years does a couple % accretive have to add up to compare to saying, "I'm gonna be disciplined and patient. I might hold $1-2 billion in cash on the balance sheet for two, three years." And then when you see a big down cycle, lean in and do something with conviction countercyclically. You could never match through a programmatic approach taking that more disciplined approach.
I think in any commodity business, whether it's energy commodities, metal, ag, whatever, like, it's always cyclical, and you're gonna see those big up swings and down swings. When you have cash, you shouldn't buy back stock, right? I mean, that's why I think a lot of the variable dividends came into place just to kind of formulaically keep that from happening, to bring some more discipline to the industry. But for us, I think to really maximize long-term value creation and be able to act countercyclically, having low debt's key 'cause you can lever up in a down cycle. Having cash is key. You don't have to go raise cash to do a deal. You can buy your stock back. You can go buy another asset.
You know, and it's really hard to overemphasize the value of optionality when matched up with volatility.
That makes a lot of sense. Thank you. I do wanna talk about LNG, and Sam, maybe you can kick that off because LNG marketing has been a key, key thesis for both of your companies.
Yeah. I mean, both Chesapeake and EQT have signed Heads of Agreement for to export LNG recently. So can you both talk a little bit about what you've seen that opportunity, but also how you're thinking about, how you can mitigate cash flow risks if the U.S. LNG exports were to shut?
Yeah. Happy to go first. So yeah, we have signed heads of agreement with Vitol and Gunvor to have these offtake of LNG from LNG facilities that we will mutually then go out and identify. And that part feels good. It's the end product of a lot of diligence and conversations with different counterparties that we've had over the years. The strategy and the vision behind all of that is we view LNG just as another sales point. Just like we sell gas at different pricing points and different hubs, we view LNG as just another diversification of the portfolio. So from a portfolio diversification point of view, the more you're linked to the end consumer 'cause if you roughly do the math, so right now we export, what, 14 BCF a day on a 105, 106 production.
If it ramps up to about 25 BCF a day and the production goes up to about 120, so roughly it's around, what, 20-ish% of the U.S. production is going to go be linked to the LNG market. Our expectation and hope is to get 15%-20% of our production to be linked to LNG just so that we are almost mimicking that allocation, if you will. And the deals that we have signed up so far, that they get us to around 6% of our production. So there's clearly headroom for us to do more transactions. Once you do the first one, the next subsequent ones become easier 'cause you've kind of established a template on what conditions work for you, and then you can go hopefully rinse and repeat that.
Now, in terms of the second part of your question, how do you manage the risk around it? We've been very intentional to either have built-in contractual collars, which is, you know, we are willing to if the spread between JKM and Henry Hub widens, and we are willing to give up some of that upside and in return get some of the downside protection from in case the reverse happens where the spread kind of collapses. So that's part one. The other thing we have also been very diligent about is having some downside protection rights. So having cancellation rights. For example, on a 90-day notice, we could cancel an LNG cargo. And in that situation, we are only obligated for a piece of the toll that we were obligated to in case if we had utilized it fully.
Having that kind of structural downside protection being in place gets us more comfortable getting into these contracts 'cause let's be honest, there will be periods of time where these things will go up and down, and they won't be in the money forever. I mean, there will be periods of time when that spread will go upside down and you'll be losing money. Having some of these structural protections in place is the right way of risk sharing between us, the liquefier, and the offtaker. Eventually, as I said, I mean, you'll see us doing more of these transactions.
Jeremy, maybe just on the collar structure because we're getting close to time. Like, how successful have you been in getting those collar structures signed, to protect your downside on the LNG contracts?
Yeah. Look, I think there's active discussions. That stuff takes a long time. I mean, even just getting an HOA turned into an LTSA takes six months at least, right?
Right.
You know, I think we'll take probably a portfolio approach to our kinda like Mohit described. It's an extension of your existing just standard marketing of gas in different markets around the country. It's a new in-market. I think you'll expect us, just say we end up, I mean, kind of similar levels, call it 15% of production. Maybe, you know, 30% of that is under longer-term contracts. 30% of that might be under more shorter-term, kinda five-year-type contracts, and some of it's in the spot market, that through our tolling structure we can optimize and move around and capture our whether it's TTF or JKM or another market in the world, but you know, we wanna have optionality. I totally agree with his comments that, you know, there's gonna be periods of time where it's really lucrative to have the contracts.
There's other periods of time where it's gonna be bear market and you kinda wish you didn't have the contract. So, and there's different ways to manage that. And you can also hedge it internationally. I mean, you could hedge TTF pricing and just mitigate your downside. But again, a lot of it comes down to what price do you need for that to be, you know, break even to just selling the gas domestically?
Right.
And what are you really trying to protect? What is that downside? So your level of exposure, the amount you sign up for is also one way to do that. But I think we're pretty aligned in how we think about that 15%-20% level in terms of total production capacity.
We are out of time, but there's so much more to unpack. We could have talked about MVP and the sales agreement you signed, which reduces the long-term supply cost. We've talked about M&A strategy and how you're thinking about that. But I'm sure that will be had with other investors. But thank you so much for taking the time. We really appreciate it. And hope you guys have a great rest of today. Thank you so much, investors. Thank you.