With our next presenting company, we're gonna do this in kind of a fireside chat sort of format. We have Expand Energy, which is the largest U.S. natural gas producer. With us today on behalf of Expand is the Chief Operating Officer, Josh Viets. Josh and I are just gonna have a fireside chat here, and if there's any questions, we can field those as well. Maybe Josh, just for those that aren't as familiar with Expand, just give a brief overview of the company, the assets.
Expand Energy came to existence through the combination of Chesapeake Energy and Southwestern Energy, emerged in 2024. We've been in existence now for, you know, approaching 18 months. Both companies have a long history within the U.S. Shale, both being pioneers in case of developing unconventional gas reservoirs. Today we are the largest producer of natural gas in the country. We produce about 7.5 Bcf a day natural gas on a net basis. On a gross basis, we produce roughly 10% of the country's natural gas supply. One of the unique advantages of the company is, we do own assets across the two most prominent natural gas basins, the Lower 48.
That's the Haynesville Shale, and the Appalachia Basin, that expands from eastern Ohio up to northeastern Pennsylvania. We think that's a unique advantage for the company, and that's really just because there's different demand dynamics that are existing in both places. We also have an investment grade balance sheet, and we're currently in the S&P 500. We think that investment grade balance sheet is incredibly important and combined with low leverage, that's less than 1 times. We think those attributes are gonna be incredibly important for us to capture opportunities going forward as we look for opportunities to further integrate our production, our well head volumes down into the downstream market.
I know the Raymond James view, we're obviously quite constructive on natural gas. You know, our view is that as you get the kinda AI-driven load growth, the big ramp in LNG exports, the Haynesville is basically kind of the swing basin on the supply side to meet that the load growth and the export ramp. With y'all being the largest producer in the Haynesville, sort of the de facto kinda swing producer, if you will. Y'all have got a slide that I think is quite helpful that, yeah, we could probably pull up. I kinda call it like your heat map.
Kinda strategy on sorta kind of the when it makes sense for y'all based on the gas strip, you know, to either hit the accelerator or the brakes. Just maybe kinda walk investors through how y'all think about, you know, sort of your role as that swing producer.
Yeah, I mean, first of all, I think we think it's incredibly important that we can create clarity to the markets on how we're gonna choose to allocate capital back into our business. One of the unique advantages that Expand Energy has is our ability to grow production. But of course, we want the production to be grown in times where there's been structural changes in the supply-demand fundamentals. John was alluding to the fact that we are living in this era of demand increases, and it's coming, it's coming through three places. It's LNG growth, it's power demand, which is largely being generated through the expansion of computing, and then there's industrial demand that's also growing. Probably gets less talked about, but it's a real factor.
When we think about CapEx allocation with the business, it has to be grounded in fundamentals. Ultimately, when you work your fundamentals, you're trying to arrive at a price. One of the things that we talk a lot about is, you know, our view on a mid-cycle price, and that's really where this heat map starts. Our view on mid-cycle price, which is bolded there in the center of the chart, is $3.50-$4. We think that is not necessarily shouldn't be skewed, as this is what we think the next two or three-year strip will play out. You should think about that as that's the price that we're willing to underwrite our capital program on. That's really the first key input to how we think about it.
To John's question, well, you guys are the swing producer. Demand is increasing, therefore, you should, you know, consider, you know, adding production. What we would say is, well, let's first take a step back and take that renewed view. Is the price signals that we're seeing today, are they transitory, or do we expect them to be durable? For those durable changes, we would expect that, yes, in those scenarios, we would have the potential to produce more. Today, and as we look out over the next, call it three to five years, we think that band of $3.50-$4.00 is the right view to underwrite the capital program. The output of that ultimately then becomes the amount of production that we think is appropriate to introduce into the market.
For us in 2026, that's 7.5 Bcf a day. Then we know what the sustaining CapEx is in order to support that production profile. That for us, on a maintenance basis, is just under $2.8 billion. This is something that we look at, you know, regularly, but we're very careful not to allow some transitory effect. Think about Winter Storm Fern. You know, prices ran on the prompt basis to $7 for the month of February. You know, those aren't gonna be the types of signals that we're thinking about resetting a price, because it's really about what's happening one, two, and three years out that we need to understand to see how those supply-demand balances shift to ultimately re-peg our view on mid-cycle price.
You know, over the past year, you've been able to lower the breakeven gas price in the Haynesville by about 15%. Some of that through, like, vertical integration efforts. Just maybe speak to that and any other levers you see to be able to keep moving that lower.
It's been a phenomenal year for the company. I've, you know, been in the industry for 25 years, and I've never seen an individual business unit or entity move by as much as we've seen in terms of the breakeven improvements within the asset. Really the forefront of this was, of course, the merger. We had, you know, both companies operating the Haynesville at the time, both running relatively healthy programs. One of the opportunities that we saw very early on was the inability to normalize the drilling performance between the two companies.
One of the things we probably underestimated is oftentimes you put two companies together and you see one has a higher cost, and you say, "Well, I'm just gonna take that higher cost company and bring it in line with where the other company is." We did that, and then we did a little bit more because what you don't recognize is when you take best practices from both companies, one plus one doesn't equal two, it's gonna equal something like 2.5, and that's what we realized in that time. One of the biggest movements that we saw within our capital improvements, where we've reduced our well cost by 13%, in a single year, we increased our drilling efficiency by over 30%.
It's just a phenomenal outcome, again, to put two big companies together and be able to generate those types of outcomes so quickly. I think the obvious question is: Well, how did that happen? It's real easy to go change a well design, so a casing program, or your bit selection. It's another thing to go change how you drill, and that's what I would tell you, is those savings came how we drill wells. It's about, you know, the integration of our engineering, our analysts, our drilling contractors, the company men on site working together to go drive a faster optimization of drilling parameters. Really a credit to the organization for that. Again, a 30% reduction in our drilling times in the most complex basin in the U.S.
The other factor was, and John alluded to this, so we made an investment back in 2024 to go develop our own sand source, and that had two real key benefits. One is the sand source was more proximal to our operations, so we're able to shorten the trucking time to get the sand from the mine to our well sites. Also it's just simply a lower input cost. We can extract it at a lower cost than what somebody else could because you're clipping the margin away from the supplier. What that ultimately translated to is the input cost for our sand was reduced by 40%, and the proppant we buy to put down in the wells with the hydraulic fracturing process is one of the larger input cost into the completion.
It's great that I can lower my input cost, but actually what's really exciting is when I lower my input cost, I can actually pump more of that product, I can increase my proppant intensity, which translates to higher production. During this time, we also increased our proppant intensity by roughly 20%. This trend that you see on the chart on the left is showing well productivity, and it's looking at a 12-month cumulative production per lateral foot of a horizontal well. This trend that you see there with a roughly 11% improvement over the last five years, this is a trend that definitely bucks the trends that we're seeing across the broader shale plays. You know, so much of the narrative is really centered around the degradation of inventory that's occurring.
By re-reconfiguring our economics through, you know, smart vertical integration, we've been able to reset the narrative around production. This isn't just about cost reduction, this is also about production improvements, which is enhancing, of course, our well returns and our overall capital efficiency for the business. The last piece I would mention is, we also saw year-over-year an 8% reduction in our production expense in the field. Again, when you take two companies together, both of us, you know, have large development programs, both, you know, have a lot of water to manage. You'll be able to go and invest in water infrastructure. We reconfigure how we go and haul water from a location to a disposal site, you know, also turned up in a really big way.
Those two things combined, the 13% reduction in capital cost, the increase in production from the new wells, combined with the lower production expense is ultimately what contributed to this 15% improvement in our breakeven.
You know, you've got by far the deepest inventory in the Haynesville, couple of decades plus, but y'all have recently put together a pretty big acreage position in the Western Haynesville.
Set aside some of your capital to try to delineate that field. Maybe just speak to that decision and what kind of makes you excited about the Western Haynesville.
Yeah. You know, we think organically building acreage positions is incredibly valuable for the company. When you look at over the last year some of the transactions in the Haynesville specifically, you'll see that on a per location basis, transactions are occurring at $3 million-$4 million per location. That's pretty high if you look back over the cycles of natural gas plays. Those are things that we would look at, but simply, they just don't make sense. We prefer to be countercyclical when we think about acquiring existing assets. In the case of the Western Haynesville, that was a play that we actually started evaluating back in the 2023 timeframe. When we started building our acreage position late in 2023 and into 2024, we were 40 mi away from the closest producing well.
We had seismic data that covered the area. We noticed that was less structurally complex than what we see as you go further west into the far western parts of the Haynesville, where most of the activity has been concentrated. Very quietly, we were able to aggregate a relatively modest acreage position, drill a vertical well, prove the presence of the reservoir and the prospectivity of it. With that vertical well result, we were able to go then build very quietly a 75,000 acre position. Now here we are with roughly 200 wells of inventory that we've now acquired at less than $1 million a location. Again, less than $1 million a location versus $3 million to $4 million.
We just absolutely love the upside that comes with that, and we like the ability to go generate a full cycle return, through that organic, you know, leasing and exploration effort. The other great thing for us, again, this highly perspective area, a company like ours that has 20 years of inventory in the Haynesville, we don't have to have this play contribute right off the bat. In other words, we can be very methodical about how we appraise the asset, how we think about infrastructure being built into the play. Then as costs come down in the play, we will look to integrate that into our existing program, or kind of back to the discussion on how we think about mid-cycle price.
If mid-cycle price moved up with higher demand, and that was calling for more production, that now serves as another growth engine for the company. We really like the way that, you know, we've been able to position ourselves in that part of the play.
You know, we've seen the Haynesville rig count, has gone from 30 rigs to roughly 50 rigs over the last 12 months. You know, given in our estimation, we probably need to add another 25 rigs or so from here in the Haynesville to get what we think is the supply growth needed to meet that AI driven load growth, the export ramp. Given that only, you know, y'all and maybe one other company have any meaningful inventory in the Haynesville, at least of higher quality rock, the core tier one stuff that works in a $3-ish environment. Like how do you see that playing out as the rig count goes up and a lot of these operators are already running out of their best rock? Just kind of how do you see that playing out?
Yeah, I mean, I think what it's pointing to is that there's gonna have to be a higher price in order to get enough gas into the markets to support the longer term demand. I think that just puts us at more of advantage. We control roughly 40% of the inventory within the Haynesville. We by far have the lowest breakeven. We have over 20 years of inventory remaining. And if we, you know, kind of go back to the conversation earlier about the breakeven improvements, just in the last year, we've added five years of inventory that has a breakeven below $3.50.
The other thing to just keep in mind, we included a slide in our investor deck at the, at the end, and Obie can flip ahead to that slide. Not all rigs in the Haynesville are created equal. One of the things that's really interesting, when we combine the increased drilling efficiency within our business, combined with the premier acreage position that we command, when you compare our rigs to the average industry rig over a two-year per time period, our rigs will generate 50% more production than the average industry rig.
In other words, what you should be paying attention to is when Expand starts adding rigs, 'cause that's really where you would start to see, I think, some acceleration of supply in the region, and less so when you see some of the smaller operators who are developing less quality acreage with a very limited inventory life. I think what we see right now is gonna be a pretty modest supply impact. Again, I think our belief is in order to meet the demand growth. Think about this, 10 Bcf a day is gonna be needed just to support the anticipated under construction LNG facilities in the US Gulf Coast over the next 3-4 years.
There is a call on gas, and we think ultimately a higher price is going to be needed to support it, given where inventory sits today.
You know, given the fact that, you know, you've got peers that are pretty inventory constrained, you've got inventory that, you know, at least some of it you may not get to for 15, 20 years. I mean, is there some calculus you're walking through that says, "Well, if that acreage is more valuable to some of my peers, and I'm not gonna get around to drilling it for a while, that maybe some of that might be a divestiture?
Yeah. You know, we really take great pride on being good active portfolio managers. I mean, just over the last four years, you know, we've divested out of the Powder River position. That was inventory that wasn't competing for capital. We sold out of our Eagle Ford position. That capital wasn't competing there. It was simply higher on the cost curve than what we had in the rest of the portfolio. We're constantly looking at our inventory and assessing what's gonna compete and what's not over some time period. You know, if we find ourselves in a market that's constructive, you know, I think those are the things that we have to always consider.
Recently, y'all have had, you made the decision to move the executive suite to Houston from Oklahoma City. There's been some management changes. There's been a lot bigger focus on sort of, I think, the way y'all talk about just this prize that you want to get of, like, this 20 cent uplift for the gas price that you're selling. More deals like what you did, the long-term supply agreement with Lake Charles on the methanol side? Just speak to that, like, this prize that y'all are trying to get and this push to do more and more of these long-term agreements.
Yeah, sure. I mean, I think you have to kind of think about the evolution of the company going back to the start of when Chesapeake and Southwestern merged. I mean, for me, with the rest of the executive team, at that point in time, the catalyst for growth was really centered around the delivery of synergies. You know, we've achieved that. That's gone. What's next? That's really what John is alluding to, we do believe the next catalyst for earnings growth is gonna come from our marketing and commercial business. I think, you know, the way I like to think about the opportunity in front of us and how value gets created, for one, we need to be able to move our gas into premium markets. We need access to the infrastructure.
We need the commercial agreements to access premium markets to get a pre-better price than we do today. Second, we need to be able to facilitate and capture new demand. I think the Lake Charles methanol agreement is just a fantastic, you know, example of, you know, how that can be done. There, we had existing relationships. It was gonna be along the US Gulf Coast, so proximal to our operations. We had taken out capacity on a pipe called NG3, so we had, you know, 2.5 Bcf a day of gas moving south into the Gillis area. We have 20 years of inventory, so we could backstop any commercial agreement that was in place.
You have a counterparty with committed offtake to take blue methanol from the US Gulf Coast into the international domain. That was the type of marriage, you know, that we saw, and our goal is to be able to emulate that, you know, time and time again. Again, facilitating and capturing new demand. The third thing is about monetizing volatility. We've, you know, we have a 5 Bcf storage assets in play. We have an active hedging program. I think, you know, being able to use the information that we have. We market 10 Bcf a day of natural gas, so we should always have some of the best information on natural gas flows than anybody.
Using that information to our advantage to actively hedge and to be able to generate, you know, value from that, we think is incredibly important. Again, accessing premium markets, facilitating capturing new demand, and monetizing volatility is really what our M&C strategy is focused on. For us, some of the changes that we've seen is really about us doubling down. It's really, you know, being more, not necessarily more aggressive, but a higher sense of urgency to increase the deal flow. This is incredibly competitive environment. We expect natural gas demand to increase over 25% over the next five years. The market's moving very quickly. Being closer to the customer, closer to counterparties, which we believe those counterparties exist in Houston.
Our marketing commercial, our internal team is already in Houston, so having the executive team close to this group only increases the chance, and again, is a sign of urgency that we have about capturing this opportunity. The, the aspirational goal of a $0.20 improvement to our free cash flow margin, we think is what's going to be the next catalyst for earnings growth for the company.
You know, you talked about, like, not all rig adds in the Haynesville are created equal, and that probably speaks to why, you know, Haynesville as a basin, we've seen kind of production kind of flatten out here the last several months despite the rigs getting added. The other interesting dynamic is that where a lot of the rigs have been getting added recently, is on the Texas side of the play, and there may be a lot of people that aren't aware that we have a lot of interesting pipeline dynamics when we're trying to get gas from Texas side to Louisiana side. When you marry that up with where a lot of these LNG plants are coming online, a lot of this gas, we need to try to move it east across the Texas-Louisiana border.
Maybe just talk about the dynamics there and how y'all are situated to deal with it?
I guess for that question, I'd even go, you know, further west, and it's, you know, into the Permian. Because I think the Permian is also going to be a key component to solving the supply-demand balance longer term. I think, you know, you would expect that, you know, each year you'll have 2 to 3 Bcf a day of new Permian pipe capacity coming on, and it's gonna be chunky at times. One of the issues with the Permian takeaway is where that gas is landing. You really have, you have three primary centers. It's gonna be the Dallas-Fort Worth area. You have a new pipe coming on later in the year that's taking gas to an area south of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.
You have further down south to Agua Dulce, then lastly, you have Katy, so on the west side of Houston. That is probably the one of the single biggest sources of natural gas growth. John talked about East Texas. There are infrastructure constraints that will limit the ability of that gas egressing out of west of Houston, south of Dallas, and getting that into the LNG corridor, if you think about, like, the Sabine Pass area. That infrastructure problem will eventually get solved in our minds, but it's absolutely gonna take some time.
That just creates a unique advantage for a company like ours, you know, that's producing, you know, the 3.5-4 Bcf a day in the Haynesville region today, to be able to access these premium markets as basis tightens. We think that's a great answer for our shareholders.
There's recently been some pretty big M&A transactions in both of your operating bases with the Haynesville and Appalachia. Just maybe speak to kind of how y'all evaluate M&A, just anything on that topic?
You know, I think we have a good track record that we've built up over the last four years. You know, one of the guiding principles that we have is we refer to it as our M&A non-negotiables. You know, we're absolutely gonna look at every deal that's in our backyard. We think that's just simply prudent to do that, to understand, you know, the markets and, you know, how things are trading. But these M&A non-negotiables will continue to underpin our decision-making. We're not gonna overpay for assets. You know, earlier in the conversation, I referenced $3 million-$4 million a location as we saw Asian buyers come into the Haynesville. We think that's, you know, overpaying, so we need to avoid doing that. Instead, we're focusing on organic addition.
We're not gonna stress our balance sheet. You know, I think we've learned those, you know, those lessons, painful lessons over time. Today, you know, we run the company at well under 1 times leverage, and we're not gonna go do a transaction that stresses that. The deal needs to be accretive on all financial metrics. You know, we think that's, you know, the obligation that we have to the shareholder to avoid, you know, any form of material dilution.
You know, these are the things that are gonna continue to underpin us and I think maintain the discipline, and the reputation that we've earned as a management team to be active stewards of our portfolio and timing transactions that, you know, create value for shareholders. You look at the Southwestern, you know, transaction, you had two acreage positions that were juxtaposed one another, and we can go create $600 million a year on a run rate basis of incremental free cash flow. That's the type of transactions that, you know, shareholders should look for us to continue to look for.
Do we have any questions from the audience? Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah.
Repeat the question, too.
Yeah. The question was, you know, as we're contemplating power deals that may be tied to AI, you know, what are some of the considerations that, you know, counterparties might have as they're having conversations? You know, I think one is it's around, you know, the proximity to supply, and it's the durability of supply. I think those are, you know, boxes that we check. Being in multi basins, you know, gives us more flexibility on the number of counterparties that we can interact with. Having 20 years of inventory, given the scale of production that we maintain, you know, provides that question of durability. The other thing that as a power producer and if you're a hyperscaler, you need is land.
One of the things that we've gotten really good at over time is we have lots of relationships with landowners because we've been, you know, drilling wells for, you know, two-plus decades now. We hope the combination of those types of skill sets, you know, can marry up with the power producer and the hyperscaler, you know, over time. The question was, is this something that we would expect to see over the next 12 months? We have active dialogues going on. Our expectation is as we're, you know, really doubling down within our marketing and commercial business, you know, accessing power, accessing industrial, accessing the LNG infrastructure are all the types of transactions that we're gonna, you know, maintain a high level of focus on.
Any other questions? Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah. So yeah. The question was just to share a little bit more information on Nick Dell'Osso leaving, the timing of the new executives coming in, which includes CFO, CEO, and then I think that's specific to me. Maybe I'll... Yeah, I'll work my way backwards. As part of the change, one of the things that we decided to do is we wanted to avoid the disruption to our operating teams. 80% of the company's corporate staff that supports the traditional E&P business is located in Oklahoma City. I believe, the board believes that that's going incredibly well. We've, you know, we've made a ton of progress over the last year, we don't wanna disrupt that. My role, the team will stay in Oklahoma City.
As far as the timing goes, you know, we expect this process for the CEO specifically to take, you know, six to nine months. Mike Wichterich, who's our chairman, is coming in, has come in as the interim CEO, and he'll help, you know, lead the search process while leading the day-to-day dealings of the company. The CFO's search has been going on obviously for a little bit longer, you know, we hope, you know, that announcement would come sooner rather than later. We expect that announcement to be ahead of the announcement of a new CEO. Just, you know, your question, you know, with Nick, I mean, this was really about not necessarily a disagreement of strategy.
It was really about the tactics of how that strategy is executed upon. That was, you know, included, you know, the need to be in Houston closer to counterparties, supporting directly, you know, the M&C organization. That was a situation where unfortunately, Nick wasn't in a position to be able to support that relocation. That's, you know, where we find ourselves today. You know, I think that's to be decided. You know, the board is running the search process and so, you know, we wanna make sure we understand what that market looks like. You know, we want, you know, high quality candidates that can come in and lead the strategy that we've laid out.
I think we're out of time. Josh will be available.