Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Matador's Q3 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Some of the presenters today will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures regularly used by Matador Resources in measuring the company's financial performance. Reconciliations of such non-GAAP financial measures with the comparable financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP are contained at the end of the company's earnings press release. As a reminder, certain statements included in this morning's presentation may be forward-looking and reflect the company's current expectations or forecasts of future events based on the information that is now available. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially is contained in the company's earnings release and its most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q.
Finally, in addition to the earnings press release, I would like to remind everyone on the call that you can find a slide presentation in connection with Q3 2021 earnings release under the Investor Relations tab on our website. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Joe Foran, our Chairman and CEO. Joe?
Thank you, Mac. I just have a very brief comment or two before we begin the question and answer. First, I just wanna say it's been very exciting for us this year and gratifying. Our themes were to pay down debt, find a way to increase our dividend, and to set ourselves up for another good year in 2022. Coming into Q4 as we have, we believe those objectives have been attained, and we're excited about the outlook going forward, and that 2022 is shaping up to be a good year. All areas of the company are doing well. The team is performing. They're working together.
They're reaching some outstanding results, which is reflected in our current stock price, and gives me great pleasure just to note that the last month or so, really since the end of August, that we've been attaining one record, all-time record high after another. We appreciate the support we've received from you and from the market and from our shareholders. A special shout-out to our field staff who work through the cold and hours, sleeping in their trucks, doing whatever it took to keep the wells running through the night, getting up and checking it every few hours. From the capital efficiency gains that each of the groups have contributed to, so that three years ago, we drilled one well that was over a mile and a half long.
This year, every well we will drill will be 2mi or longer except for one. A great change that has added to the performance of the company, and we appreciate all the extra effort and that our staff both here and in the field have done to bring about this really high performance execution. With that, I'd like to turn it back to you for questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star then one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press the pound key. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraints, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Again, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up until all have had a chance to ask a question, after which we would open up additional questions from you. Your first question comes from the line of Scott Hanold from RBC Capital. Your line is open.
Hey.
Yeah, good morning y'all. Congrats on the strong quarter again. I'm kinda wondering in this commodity price environment and the path that you all are going down. It looks like, you know, you're gonna have a fair amount of free cash flow going forward, and it looks like you're gonna have enough free cash flow generation to pay off the revolver, you know, very early next year. I know it's maybe sort of a bit too early to kinda spend money that you don't have right now, but can you give us a sense of how you think about like free cash flow, big picture moving forward?
Like, what are your priorities and how should investors, you know, think about Matador and, you know, what you do with it?
Scott, it's a great question, and it's a very worthy question. Really, we talk about that every day. What should we do with this, you know, the expectancy of so much more free cash flow? Different people have. You know how we work. We get together, we express our ideas, and we work our way through them. I would say those plans are still evolving. At the very core is, we want to be sure this is a once-in-10-year opportunity that we make the most of it. The nice thing is that we're ahead. We don't have to take a bunch of chances that we can, you know, we can be cautious, but effective. We're looking at the range of ideas open to us.
We got our basic ground game with our drilling rigs and prospects that is gonna go forward. Tom and his group have got a drill schedule with a lot of, you know, A+, it's all A+ locations. That basic ground game is gonna go ahead. The midstream is growing. We've been attracting third party companies to participate in the midstream, and very pleased with how that's going. Our land group has got a number of ideas and we're weighing those against the relative certainty of some number of the wells that we have scheduled to drill. It still is in the formative stage. We've accomplished what we wanted to do, which was pay down the debt, and that we're in position.
We've lowered our debt over the past year, as you can see from the slide, down to $100 million today. We're from $475 to 100 million. We have room there to have some money available for either expanding the drilling program or looking at, you know, relatively small acquisitions. You know, we favor not company to company, but the bolt-on transactions to our existing leases because there's less risk because we know the areas it fits in. Often, that means we can expand to from 1-2mi to now even looking at 2.5 or 3mi Laterals. That's interesting. You know, further expansion perhaps on our midstream. But we wanna, you know.
We're not gonna overlook getting that debt down, and we're certainly uppermost in our mind is being good to our shareholders who have stayed with us all this time and looking at a potential dividend increase. The timing of which we're not sure, but we did this dividend increase a quarter early to signal that they are uppermost in our mind, and we're gonna take care of them in the forthcoming year. These discussions are going on, and we'll have these plans put together as we always do in January or early February. I think you're gonna like what you see. The choices are strong, and we're very excited by them. David, what did I leave out here?
I'm not really sure you left out anything, Joe. I was kinda thinking through the things in my mind. I guess, Scott, the only other thing, one other choice or one other thing we've talked about a little bit was maybe there might be an opportune time in 2022, you know, to look at restructuring the bonds a little bit. You know, once we have the revolver paid off, we might look to do that. That's something we've chatted about. Certainly haven't made any final decision on that at all. I think that's something else that we might consider maybe buying some of that in and restructuring the bonds a little bit just to get maturities pushed out.
I think that, you know, we were real pleased to get, you know, this summer, we've gotten upgrades from S&P. We've gotten upgrades from Moody's. You know, I think we'll work hard to continue that process. You know, I think that, you know, our bonds have been trading at $104 or so. So we, you know, they're only yielding about 4.5% these days. So I think that we feel like that, if we wanted to do something that we could, you know, significantly reduce the coupon from where we are now. So I think there's a lot of, as Joe said, a lot of options for us going forward.
Yeah. I just wanna indicate that the way the teams are working together and the leadership is emerging from those teams, it's allowing David and Matt and me and others on the executive team more time to study these options, which we appreciate. Our you know, our measurement groups and the commodity verification groups are really doing their part too. Everybody's working together, and it's really pleasing to see the new leadership emerging.
Appreciate the color there. As my follow-up question, I'm not gonna push you on 2022 guidance at this point because I know that'll come probably early next year. You know, given the fourth quarter production cadence, where you're shutting in a little bit more wells to, I guess, you know, bring forward some completions, could you give us a sense of like the progression as you get into Q1 2022? Because it seems to me, you know, like there could be a pretty significant step up, and you know, maybe in that sequential kind of doubled, mid-doubled, 15%+ into Q1. Can you give us a little color on where you see that going?
I'm not trying to avoid it, but I'm gonna pun it to David.
Yeah, Scott. Thanks. You know, look, I think you're right. I think that you know that we do expect to see a meaningful increase in production in Q1 of 2022. You know, why is that? Well, the wells that we will have shut in at State Line, the Bone fracs, this next 11 wells should all finish by the end of the year is our expectation. And once they do, then we'll start drilling out plugs. And as we do, we'll begin to return and restore more of that production online. You know, so those wells are gonna all come back on.
By I hope mid-February or so, certainly during the latter part of February, there's gonna be 11 new Voni wells that are coming online. In addition, we're currently fracking the remaining nine wells that we drilled this year at Stebbins. All those are gonna be fracked here before long, and I think that you know we've committed to having them turn to sales before the end of the year. They're gonna begin to you know impact production toward the end of the year. But certainly, we'll have a full quarter of production in Q1 . We've got two more wells at Antelope Ridge that are gonna get done by the you know by the end of the year, and we'll have a full Q1 .
We got three wells down in Wolf right now on the Barnett that will probably come on sometime in the first quarter as well. You know, I think that all that together would suggest that you know, over the course of the quarter that our production will begin to grow meaningfully. Then, you know, as you know, we've got nine wells that we're drilling at Rodney, and those will probably start to come on in, you know, mid to late March. I think that bodes well for you know, for the second quarter as well, you know. I think we feel like that we'll have meaningful growth, and then it'll be fairly sustainable, you know, throughout the rest of the year.
We're excited about that and, you know, we'll put a fine point to where we think those numbers will actually be and be happy to share those, you know, with our next conference call and our guidance release. Overall, I think we're really, like, excited about what's coming down the pipe here.
All right. Well, appreciate that. Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Neal Dingmann from Truist Securities. Your line is open, sir.
Morning, all. First question today is on just curious on some shut-in information. Specifically, you all mentioned directly, you know, on the release about going directly to artificial lift on five of those 13 Boros wells, as well as plans to shut in more for longer period ahead of the Voni completion. Really my question there is just wanted to see, you know, Joe, you or Matt or one of the guys to expand a little bit on what you saw in terms of reservoir pressure changes or, you know, what caused you to move to an artificial lift and, you know, maybe one other touch on to that. What do you think about, you know, how you think about the offset, you know, sort of production on that? Just, I'm trying to sort of think about those two things separately and would love to hear your color on that.
Yep. Hey, Neal Dingmann, it's David. You packed a lot into that question, I've got to say. Let me take a minute and try to unpack it. First of all, let's talk about the question you asked with regard to the shut-ins that we planned this quarter in Q4 on the Vonis . As we indicated in the release, you know, we expect to shut in a few more of the Voni wells, I shouldn't say the Voni wells, a few more of the existing producing wells, Voni and Boros, as we complete these wells at Voni, and we expect to shut them in for a little bit longer than what we were anticipating this time three months ago. Why is that?
Well, the biggest reason was, as we were fracking the Boros wells, we realized that there was a little more frac communication with some of the existing wells than what we had anticipated. I wanna be clear that we're all level set on its frac communication. It's just communication while we're doing the fracs. Once, you know, that's over with and we turn these wells back to sales, we're not seeing any adverse effect, you know, from that communication. We're not talking reservoir effects. We're not talking drainage effects. We're just talking frac communication. Frankly, I think you can appreciate, we certainly can, that we have 26 currently and 39 now producing wells at, you know, at state line.
Very high value wells that we have created and constructed over the past year, and we're not gonna mess them up, you know. We're going to be cautious. We're gonna shut in more of them if we need to protect them. We're gonna leave them shut in for a few more days. If that means that our production is gonna be slightly lower in Q4 than we might have thought, that's okay, you know, because we feel that it's way more important to protect those wells and preserve that value, and that's the way we're gonna approach it. Now, you also asked a question about the comments we made about the artificial lift on the First Bone Spring and the Avalon.
That I think is also a very easy question to answer. Seems like some folks thought that we were indicating that the reservoir pressure in these zones was abnormally low. Absolutely not. The reservoir pressure is what we expected it to be. I think you have to, you know, remember that we are talking about two of the—they're really the two shallower zones that we're completing, you know, anywhere, the Avalon and the First Bone Spring. By definition, they have lower reservoir pressures than they do if you're down in the Wolfcamp B or the Wolfcamp AXY. You know, most of the geopressure occurs in the basin below, right at the top of the Wolfcamp. You get the really, really high pressures when you go into the Wolfcamp and below.
When you're in the Bone Spring, I'd say those are mildly geopressured, but they're not, they're not highly geopressured zones, and we see that all over the basin. We tend to, when we're flowing back wells in the First Bone Spring or in the Avalon, they just tend to have a little bit lower flowing pressure because their absolute reservoir pressure is lower. That's not a big deal. In this particular case, let's take the First Bone Spring. Those wells, a couple of wells took a little bit longer to start cutting hydrocarbons than what other wells have at state line or in some other areas. It didn't mean that that was a problem because it wasn't.
In fact, I can point you to several other cases in the First Bone Spring where it took 30% or so of the load coming back before we started to see hydrocarbons. The Ray 113, for example, which is up in Rustler Breaks, is a great example of that. It's turned out to be one of our best First Bone Spring wells. So I don't think we're concerned at all about any of this. Right now, I wanna make it clear, all those wells were flowing up casing. They, not one of them, loaded up and died during the course of this process. Also, you know, we just as a team, several of them, Neil, are making, you know, 1,700 BOE a day, 1,500 BOE a day, and still cleaning up.
You know, we're still very encouraged by these wells and their performance, and it probably would help them if we just went ahead and installed artificial lift. We'll be doing it before long anyway. We decided, hey, we got the rig, we got the time, let's just go ahead and put them on gas lift and help them to continue to clean up faster and get to their full potential. That's really what we're doing, and that's all that we were really indicating in the commentary we made in the release. I will say that beyond those wells, the Second Bone Spring wells continue to be excellent. I'm really happy with the Third Bone Spring carbonate wells that we talked about.
That's a new zone for us down there, not one that we originally thought we'd be completing. Hats off to the geoscience team and the asset team for bringing that zone forward, and those are excellent wells. Then wanted to demonstrate the fact that, you know, we've added some recent Wolfcamp B wells, which are the gassy wells, and at a time of high gas prices, those have worked out really well too for us. All in all, I think we're, you know, we're in a good place and very happy with the results from the Boros wells. Just, those particular wells just hadn't cleaned up to the point that we thought it made sense to share the results with everybody at this point. That's it.
Yeah. Sounds like right on plan there, as we thought, with you guys. Great job there. Secondly, just maybe on San Mateo specifically, we've seen some strong midstream deals again recently like we did, you know, I guess years ago at kind of the highs. Wondering, given the enormous value you all have at San Mateo, you know, and kind of where you sit with that now, any thoughts on any types of transactions or, you know, I know Matt's talked about it in the past. I'd love to hear kind of where you all think of, you know, what you think about San Mateo at this point.
I'm gonna say a little bit and then turn it over to Matt to finish up. We're real pleased with the way San Mateo is going. I think the work with our partner has been very strong, and we're looking at it, you know, how best to add value to that. Is it by extensions and connections to our existing system and with our third-party contacts? Or going into some other areas where we may be drilling that we're looking at doing some new drilling. The team has looked at a lot of different ways.
You're right, San Mateo has not only added value, financially, it's added an operational value because during the Uri storm, our plant was one of only 5% of the plants that were able to keep operating. We were one of them. The same thing about when we've been ready to connect, the pipe's been there waiting. That's had advantages, and it's given us more options in our marketing efforts. It's been clearly the financial value, but the operational value has been very real too. When we've told you we were gonna turn on these wells, we've been able to make those deadlines, where if you had some other midstream company for which you had no control over, given the situation out there and the delays, it'd been unlikely that we would have met those dates.
We were glad we could keep our word to you that we would turn those wells on, as we said we would. It's got a lot of opportunities, and sorting through them and being sure we're selective has been the order of the day. Matt, what would you add to that?
You know, Joe, I think you said it well. The thing I would underscore is again the advantage to operating this business, and it's not only for us, but it's also for our third-party customers. What Joe said is exactly right. When Matador says we've got four wells at Rustler Breaks we wanna turn on or at State Line or at Stebbins or down at Wolf, wherever that may be, then we've got three pipes sitting there waiting on us. We've got gas, we've got oil, and we've got water. We've tried to take the same approach with our third-party customers, and I think that's worked out well. You know, multiple repeat customers that have come to us and said, "We like what you're doing with the water.
Do you think you would be interested in bringing on the oil and/or the gas?" We've done that successfully. I do think, Neil, to your point, if you contemplate the value of the midstream company relative to commodity prices, I think we're absolutely seeing an increase. You know, particularly if the rig count would go back up in the areas we operate, which we think are good areas, there will be probably even more third-party opportunities. I think we're in a really good position.
Oh, absolutely, guys. Love the optionality there. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of John Freeman of Raymond James. Your line is open, sir.
Good morning, guys.
Morning, John.
Good morning, John.
You all have done a terrific job just continuing to drive the costs down. I'm just looking at, obviously, when we started the year, y'all were targeting $730 on a D&C basis per foot. You've now reduced it again down to $680 a foot for the full year guidance.
I guess just looking at the first nine months coming in at, you know, $655 a foot, it would sort of imply that you have a pretty big up, you know, step up in Q4 to, you know, $750 a foot or so to get to that full year number, which, I mean, I realize Greater Stebbins wells are a little more expensive, but it seems like, you know, maybe that's, you know, pretty conservative. Just anything that I may be missing in sort of that math or just sort of what's going into those assumptions to get to that full year number.
John, I'll take first. I just was gonna say the first part then turn it over to Matt or Billy or to Chris for their comments. The savings here is really, in my mind, mainly from two parts. One is that we've worked with, you know, we've experienced a time where costs came down. We have long-term relations with these vendors, and, you know, they've helped us along, and we don't try to beat them down. What we try to do is ask them to help show us ways that we can improve the efficiencies, and they've been good about that. Second is that's sustainable. That doesn't go away when you improve the process.
Both Billy's group in the drilling and Chris's group in the completions have done a very good job of reducing days on the well drilling and days on the well fracking. We're fracking them faster. When you reduce the days, you save, you know, it's about $100,000 a day on the rigs and some similar on the fracking. Just cutting the time makes for a lot of savings. It's also very sustainable. We've worked at it from different angles, and I wanna commend all of them for doing a great job, both here, the engineers in the office and geologists, but also the people in the field. Matt, sorry, I hope I didn't take too much of your thunder.
No, it's all good, Joe. It's all good news. I would say, John, for us, I mean, you kinda hit on something there. The wells we drill down in State Line, we got very efficient. The costs there just kept getting better. The guys were drilling them faster, fracking them faster. You know, that did kind of move it down that direction. I would say for 2021, I think we're pretty well set on our costs. We've got a lot of things locked in for the end of the year. Going into 2022, you know, we anticipate, and we're looking very closely at this. We don't have a number yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if we saw something in the 10%-12% increase.
You know, steel prices are up, so that affects us some. We do have, you know, the steel business, the oil country tubular goods is not a big portion of the steel business, so we've been working very closely with our pipe partner, B&L Pipe Co, used to be Champions. It's now B&L. We've been working with them to make sure that we have pipe for next year, and we're very confident that we do. But I think kinda to Joe's point, you know, we're offsetting a lot of these costs with these efficiencies. If you just kind of just a couple of examples on the drilling side.
I think the last quarter, we were talking about a new lateral record for one bottom hole assembly, one bit, one motor, one MWD, being just a little over 12,000 feet. During this quarter, the guys have significantly beat that to where we're at 13,155 feet. That eliminates trips, saves days. On that particular well, that was the Third Bone Spring well we drill down in State Line. We knocked about three days off the average, which saves us about $175,000. Just on the drilling side, we're drilling these wells faster. One of the ones up at Stebbins, you mentioned that area.
We drilled one four days faster than the fastest well we had ever drilled up there, which saves us probably a quarter of a million dollars. On the drilling side, those guys continue to hit it out of the park. On the frac side, Joe mentioned this too. It's you know, completing these wells faster is very important. If you look back in 2020, we averaged about 1,250 feet of completed lateral per day. Fast-forward to our latest simul-frac operations. We pretty much doubled that, almost 2,500 feet per day. We actually had one day that was 3,600. That's a pretty good day. Why that's important, Joe mentioned, you know, the cost savings, and we pay by the frac stage.
The service provider, and we're very happy with Universal, we're very happy with Halliburton, who we're using. You know, they look and see how much we're gonna complete in a day, and they adjust their pricing on that. We save money there. We save money on the rental items. Maybe as important is we reduce the number of days that we have offset wells shut in, and we reduce the number of days between spud to turn in line. You know, even on the safety and ESG front, if we're drilling these or completing these wells twice as fast, you've got limited exposure for having the crews out there for half the days.
You know, on the environmental side, if that equipment is out there running, whether it's running at, you know, full speed or whether it's idling, you are emitting, so we're able to reduce emissions there. I think if you just roll all that up into what we're expecting for next year, I think we're very optimistic that we'll have a great year, and we'll be able to offset what might be 10% or 12% increase in service costs with some efficiencies.
That's great. I appreciate all the color on that topic. It looks like, you know, as the leverage continues to fall pretty rapidly, it appears that y'all are getting more comfortable with kind of a lower hedge position than I guess I would typically have as we, you know, approach an upcoming year. Just any other color on that?
John, just a little bit. As I mentioned, you know how we are. We get together, and everybody talks about their views, and there's a little discussion. I don't call it a debate, but a clinical analysis of what we ought to be doing. It's as much or more from the bullish view that our marketing group has on prices going forward as it is the lower leverage. I mean, the lower leverage helps in that you know, you got plenty of room on your commercial line of credit, but we still fundamentally come back and look at all the circumstances. Right now, you've got a lot of backwardation. Greg, would you add anything to that?
No, Joe, I think you hit it right on the head as far as the backwardation is definitely the you know, the drawback, the main drawback about doing anything. It just doesn't. I don't think it makes a lot of sense to do that right now. We're definitely looking at things on a daily basis to make sure whenever that tipping point we'll be ready to pounce on it. At this point in time, I don't see a real reason to go out and do anything right now with the current situation, what we're seeing as far as the long-term curve, the way it looks.
Thanks, guys. I appreciate it.
Thank you, John.
Thanks, John.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Zach Parham from JPMorgan. Your line is open.
Thank you guys for taking my question. One thing you mentioned earlier on the call was just having the balance sheet capacity to expand the drilling program. You know, can you talk a little bit about the decision to add the fifth rig and just maybe where you go from here? You know, why was now the right timing, and how do you think about adding additional activity in the future?
Zach, I'll be real quick on that. My reasoning is this past year, we've been drilling a couple of years, almost all the wells have been 100%. We owned 100%. Now, as we move into some different areas, we're getting more non-operating interests. So if you have, you know, to drill the same amount of wells where you have 50%, you're gonna have to double your rig. So that fifth rig is just really going to be used primarily in the areas where you've got 50% interest, and you have other non-op people in there. So your net capital spending is the same as when you had four rigs. It's just proportionality. David?
Yeah, you know, I think you said it well, Joe. You know, Zach, I think we tried to make it clear in our press release last week and again this week, you know, the primary impetus for picking up that rig was first and foremost to drill a saltwater disposal well up in the Stebbins area, which we had budgeted and sort of laid out from the beginning of the year. I think you can appreciate that we've drilled a lot of new wells up there this year, and we felt like we needed some additional saltwater disposal capacity.
This well was, you know, kind of on the docket, and beginning in August was sort of a good time to get that done so that we could have the well completed sort of simultaneous to when the new wells will start coming on up there at Stebbins so that if we, you know, expect we'll need a little bit of additional capacity, and this will sync up really well with that. As we mentioned, we took the rig for a term of six months. Frankly, I think all our rigs are on about six-month, you know, terms, so we have lots of optionality.
We needed then to find a home for it for the next few months, and the best place to put it, we thought, was Rodney. It enabled us to drill a few more wells there. That's always nice to be able to do this time of year because as we mentioned in the release a week ago, we are a bit constrained operationally each year by the mating habits of the Lesser Prairie-Chicken in New Mexico. That usually is a period between early March and mid-June where at least, you know, daylight operations, I believe, are all that are permitted in that period of time.
We usually like to be just in and out so that, you know, that we're not fooling with any of that during that period of time. This enabled us to be able to do that, to get these wells drilled. We'll get them fracked. They'll be, you know, we'll be turning them to sales before there's new Prairie-Chicken being made in the world, you know. I think that's, you know, that's all a very positive thing. You know, as Joe said, I think then whether we hang on to the rig or not will be. Really, I think generally when people ask us that question, it's, you know, do we think we're gonna spend a lot more money next year on drilling, and we don't.
We may need that extra rig just to sort of maintain the same level of capital spend. I think that's part of the decision-making process that's going on right now, you know, as to what will be the final mix of wells that we'll drill next year and how we'll put all that together, which we look forward to sharing at our next call.
Thanks, guys. That's great color. Just one follow-up. Could you talk a little bit about the future development plans at State Line? You know, pretty soon you'll have two packages on at both Boros and at Voni, where you've had some really strong results. You know, how many additional packages in the future are you expecting to develop at State Line? And maybe if you could talk a little bit about the additional zones you plan to come back and develop.
You know, I think, Zach, that once we get this next batch of 11 wells on at Voni, that'll be 50 producing wells at the state line. I think originally, we had permitted 96, is my what I recommend or what I remember, plus or minus 100. You know, that would suggest that we're kind of probably halfway through, you know, there. I think the zones that we would be talking about, you know, in the future, there would probably be some more Wolfcamp Bs that we would be going back and adding because we had thought there was two, maybe three benches of Wolfcamp Bs there. You know, I could see us maybe doing some additional Third Bone.
We've done this Third Bone Carbonate, but there's a Third Bone Sand that looks pretty good there too. That might be something we would do down the road. You know, there's probably a couple of different benches, targets in this First Bone Spring, and so that's something that we might look at. Of course, there are, you know, other targets in the Avalon, and we even had a Brushy Canyon, you know, target that we've looked at. Those are the kinds of things that I think would be primarily on the docket going forward.
My guess is that once we get these next group of Voni wells on, we're sort of gonna take a little bit of a pause at the Stateline and do some other things that we wanna do for a while, and then we'll probably come, you know, back in a while and continue our efforts at the, you know, Stateline. But I think when we sort of roll out our, you know, plans for 2022, that you know, we'll have a little bit less emphasis on the Stateline in 2022 and be able to move at least one of those rigs away or a couple of them away for a while and do some more things we wanna do at Rustler Breaks, over in other areas of Antelope Ridge.
There's a big new chunk of federal acreage that we got at the same time we got the state line and the Rodney Robinson over in eastern Antelope Ridge that I know the geoscientists are just dying to get some wells down on that I think could be, you know, another significant development area for Matador going forward. You know, that, you know, without going into too much detail, that's sort of how I see things evolving in the near future.
Thanks. That's helpful, color. That's all for me.
Thanks, Zach.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Michael Scialla from Stifel. Your line is open.
Hi, good morning, guys. I had a question on your thoughts on natural gas. It looked like your Q3 production, your gas production was quite a bit stronger than forecasted. Was that coincidental or anything you did deliberate there to increase gas during the quarter? I know you had a couple of Wolfcamp B wells. Maybe just along those lines, how are you thinking about returns on some of your gassier assets versus the oilier ones with prices where they are now? Does the Haynesville compete, and does the Wolfcamp B compete with the oilier parts of your inventory?
Yeah. Mike, we had made some adjustment as gas prices went up, and they looked stronger to increase our proportion of gas a little bit. Also, just to establish for you and others that we had a lot of really good gas opportunities. It just was that oil prices, the oil commodity was getting better prices. But to demonstrate that we had those options going forward, we wanted to drill a couple of gas wells. David, more specifics on that?
Yeah, sure, Joe. I think what I would add, Mike, is that, first of all, you know, Q3, I would say, was a little anomalous from the standpoint, a couple of things that we pointed out in the release. There were some mineral interest that we had, you know, that we received production on from some properties we had in the Haynesville for the first time in Q3. We really weren't sure about the timing of the operations of the folks drilling those wells and when that first production might be received. We hadn't included that in our original forecast, and so that was nice.
You know, it's always nice to sort of have free gas, and so that added to a bump there in the quarter. We also ended up acquiring a little bit of additional working interest in a well or two in the Delaware that tended to be a little bit more gassy wells that you know that kinda added to that because we sort of had a little bit of catch up you know on the production there too. I think as Joe pointed out you know we did add a couple of Wolfcamp B wells there at State Line on the Boros side. Frankly, we're gonna drill four more on the Boros side, you know.
That's four of the 11 that we have planned, you know, for this next time. As far as the returns go, I think we've always been happy with, you know, the returns from the Wolfcamp B wells. It's just that right now we're happier, you know. I mean, it's just one of those deals where if you're gonna do it, this seems like a really good time to take advantage of that, so. I think we've always said, you know, we've got some really good gas wells to drill, not only to make nice quantities of gas, it's also rich gas, so there's a lot of NGLs associated with that. Then they also make oil along with them. You know, what's not to like about that, you know, right now?
You know, that's one reason that we probably have decided to, you know, bump a few of those up in the program a little earlier than maybe we might have otherwise.
That makes sense. Next question is along the lines of the last question you just answered on State Line. You know, you said you're gonna be about halfway done once you get to sort of 50 wells here online. I was curious, could you kind of run through sort of a similar,
The thought process on Rodney Robinson, where are you there in terms of kind of the remaining inventory? Then you also mentioned that Eastern acreage, be curious to learn a little bit more about that as well. What's the potential inventory like there?
Yeah. I'm gonna start, and then I may get to my good buddy, Tom Elsener here to help me out a little bit. I believe I'm correct that we have 10 wells currently producing at Rodney, nine that are drilling, so that would give us 19. I think that probably works us, you know, 50%-60%, you know, ± through the inventory that we had there. Although, as always, I think the geoscience group and the asset teams continue to identify new targets. I wouldn't be surprised if we ultimately end up with more than 40, you know, targets there. That's what we had originally. I think we'd originally permitted, like, 29 or something like that.
We would be 19 through that, but I already know that they've got more than that on the, you know, on the drawing board. I think that we'll see more than that at Rodney before we're done. Well, maybe I'll just pause. Tom, you wanna add anything to that?
Yeah. No, David said it very well. The teams continue to find new opportunities, you know, at Rodney Robinson, where we're interested in this, you know, like State Line with Third Bone Spring Carbonate. We see potential there at Rodney Robinson, which is one of the wells, one of the targets that we're still working on submitting additional federal permits, as David mentioned. The initial 29 federal permits at Rodney Robinson, that was kinda just to get us started so that we could diversify our inventory of permits and acquire more permits at State Line. The teams today are in the process of adding and submitting more permits at Rodney Robinson for additional zones in the Third Bone Spring Carbonate into the Wolfcamp A lower, even to the Second Bone Spring carbonate.
We have a lot of potential in some of the zones we haven't really talked about a whole lot. In addition to those, we still think there's a lot of potential in the Wolfcamp B, in the Brushy Canyon. As the nine wells that we're gonna be drilling on Rodney Robinson, we expect to see just awesome payouts. You know, those initial 10 wells have all paid out at Rodney Robinson, and anytime you're getting these payouts in a year, six months or less, you know that we're getting stellar returns. You know, Glenn's team has done an excellent job of taking all the fluid off of Rodney Robinson and all the oil, all the gas, all the water is on pipe there. We continue to be very excited about the Rodney Robinson Tract.
Mike, I think with regard to part two of the question, I'm just gonna set it up, and then I may kick it to Ned Frost, who heads our geoscience group, and let him add a little color. You know, we bought originally about 8,400 acres in that federal lease sale back in October of 2018. Really, it's already been three years. It's kinda hard to believe that, but it was kind of a little, just a little before this time three years ago. You know, we've focused mostly on Rodney and State Line, which you know, we're I suppose about half of it. Well, not even half of it.
We do have about, I think it's a little over 4,000 acres that we bought that's pretty contiguous over there in the more easterly part of Antelope Ridge. I think what's been exciting to us, number one, we always like the acreage and the opportunity. You know, thought it might be a little more exploration-focused at the time, but you know, felt like we were getting it for a good price. I think with time, what we've seen as we've been working at State Line and Rodney Robinson, that the rest of the world has just gotten closer and closer and made good wells, you know, on every, just almost every side of that acreage, you know? It really makes us excited.
We've got, you know, permits in the hopper right now and looking forward to doing a few tests there this year. Ned, you may wanna kinda add to the kinda targets that you see there, but I think we feel like that could be a real positive area for us going forward.
Sure. Yeah. Thanks, David. I think Eastern Antelope Ridge, primarily at this point, we'll be looking at Wolfbone there. So that would be, you know, Wolfcamp A Upper and Third Bone Spring Sand. We have 3D seismic data that shows that the target heads back there pretty well. We're confident that we'll have that in good quality there. So like David has said, we're excited to get some wells down on that. Like everything, as we drill the first deeper wells, we're gonna see the shallower targets as we drill through them. So I'm quite certain we'll find more to do over there. At this point, you know, Matador has drilled 24 unique targets in the Delaware Basin. When I say targets, I mean rock intervals that are regionally mappable and discrete.
That's coming out of 13 separate formations. I think, you know, we always like to push that number higher, and I'm sure we can find a few more over there. As always, the geoscience team's very excited about what we see and anxious to get some wells on the ground.
Mike, I will say, even though we have Ned sorted, I'm kinda secretly budgeting the core because I'm sure there will be a core requested, you know, on one of those wells, coming down the road. The guys do a great job with that, and they make great use of the rock. I'm sure we'll want to invest in a little additional science as we start into that area because it certainly served us well in all the other areas that we've worked.
Mike, I'd say that's an overriding theme when we get together and talk about where are we gonna drill, what are we gonna drill, and even in the M&A questions come up about this lease being available or, do we want to, you know, acquire the adjoining lease, is the quality of the rock. That's what really drives us through all these decisions and which tracks to drill is the quality of the rock. Ned and his group have done a great job on that, and the other groups have contributed to it. We're trying to make some of the engineers a little more geology-oriented and the geologists a little more engineering and land-oriented. We believe in that interdisciplinary exchange.
Really appreciate the color, guys. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Your last question comes from the line of Gabriel Daoud from Cowen. Your line is open, sir.
Thanks. Hey, good morning, everyone.
Thanks.
Guys, I was maybe hoping we could just go back to the comment on potential, like, small bolt-ons. Could you just quantify that? Is that, like, $20 -$50 million in terms of smallish, or is it hundreds of millions, kind of similar to the HEYCO deal from 2015?
You know, Gabe, we'll look at whether it's small or large. That really isn't a factor in the screening process. The real factor of screening, just what I said on the earlier question, is what is the quality of the rock? If it's 40 acres and quality rock, it'll have our attention. It could be a big tract that doesn't have that rock potential, we won't pay much attention to it. That's why we tend to do the bolt-on because we're already familiar with the quality of the rock. That's the big draw. It isn't the amount of the acreage.
You know, we try with acquisitions to make sure it's the quality and the fit is there, and that the different groups that we have, land, geology, engineering, midstream, everybody feels good about it fitting in and adding value. It seems trite, but in the whole fashion, that's really the way we're thinking about these things.
Thanks, Joe. That makes sense. Just a quick follow-up on the comments earlier just on fighting inflation with efficiencies on the capital side. Did you guys mention just what LOE could look like as we move forward here? You had a nice number in Q2. Just curious how that will trend, just given you know, inflationary backdrop.
Yeah, I think, Gabe, it's Dave. Hey. I think, you know, we did sort of, you know, provide in our slide deck a bit of an update as to, you know. I don't think we changed our numbers as to, you know, what we thought the range of those were gonna be for the rest of the year. You know, I think, look, I'd like to give a big shout-out to our production team because I think they've done a terrific job of, you know, of cost controls over the last couple of years of, you know, really being innovative both in the office and in the field in terms of, you know, in terms of driving LOE down. They've gotten water on pipe. 98% of our water's on pipe.
83% of our oil's on pipe. They've been doing all kinds of electrification projects, you know, which not only saves us money, but it gets rid of compressors out of the field. That improves emissions. I mean, all kinds of positive things, you know. Even in the Eagle Ford. We don't talk about that a lot, but, you know, we've got a team that's worked to put all our wells on rod pumps, which they needed, you know, and that's taken a lot of compressors out of the field. It's reduced LOE. It's reduced emissions. They've just done a bang-up job, I think, in our opinion.
I really feel like that, you know, LOE is likely to trend down, you know, especially as we add, you know, significant additional production next year. I don't know that the cost will go up as much. Now, I'll qualify that a little bit by, you know, what service cost inflation might be, you know. I do think that, you know, as we would look at it today, we would expect those numbers to continue to come down a little bit. I think Glenn Stetson is here. You know, he heads our production group. Glenn, do you wanna add anything to that?
Yeah. Thank you, David. You said it well, so it's hard to really expand upon it. In 2020, we really did focus on process and efficiencies, and David mentioned most of those, centralizing compression, getting water and oil on pipe, converting wells from on-site electrical generation to grid power. Those were some of the big knobs that we turned. When you look forward, we think that we can maintain this level of unit cost and continue to chip away at it, maybe at a lower rate than we did in 2020, but continue to see efficiencies as we move forward.
The other thing, while we're on this subject, coordination with the production group with the completion group, Chris and Cliff have done a great job of coordinating, so as the fracs are cleaning up, you're waiting there with the pipe. Again, we just have fewer days out in the field before we get the production going. Makes a big difference. The LOE all been very innovative, helps with the ESG, the way y'all have reduced emissions. Shelley, will you say how much emissions have been reduced in the past year by the production group?
Sure. This is Shelley Appel, and I work on ESG for Matador, and we're proud that, from 2019 to 2020, we saw a year-over-year decrease of around 20% in our total greenhouse gas emissions intensity.
That's awesome. That's great stuff. Thanks, Shelley, and thanks, everyone.
Thank you, Gabe.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This ends the Q&A portion of this morning's conference call. I'd like to turn the call over to management for any closing remarks.
Thank you all for your time and attention. As always, we really appreciate your interest and support and the candor of your questions. In these sessions, I always want to encourage y'all to ask whatever you wanna ask, and we're happy to report and pleased with the progress. As you, I think, can tell, we're very excited, and we have more and more of our young leaders emerging that I think bodes well for the future. Once again, want to invite all of y'all as the nation starts to open up, to come see us, have lunch or breakfast or dinner with us, and we'll talk more, but eager for you to keep looking into the operations, and I think that you'll be pleased with the continuing results.
We're getting ready for a great 2022 and finish the year strong. Thanks.
Thank you, presenters. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for joining. That concludes today's conference call.