Our next speaker is Roger Jenkins, CEO of Murphy Oil. Roger, we will have your presentation. There's some material, new material that came out last night, and I'll let you do that, and then we'll do Q&A after that. Thanks.
Good afternoon, everyone. It's great to be at Barclays today. Many, many decades of Murphy attending this conference right after Labor Day, and it's a great pleasure to be here today, and thank you, Betty, for having Murphy here today. We do have a new slide deck that was 8-K'd yesterday, primarily adjusting, discussing what happened new in the quarter, which we typically do. So I'll walk through a few things with you today. I'm very excited about the quarter we're having and how well our company's doing. We have a cautionary statement. This would be the same for any executive here speaking today. Forward-looking statements will be used in normal fashion.
As we go through the agenda, take through some Murphy at a glance, what's going on with our current quarter, our 2024 plans, update on exploration, which is a key differentiator for our company, and as always, looking ahead, and there's many items in the appendix for our investors to review at their leisure. Just a new slide today, kind of repackage what we do. What is Murphy? What do we do at a glance? I was recently at another conference, and a peer of mine, a more senior executive like me, said, "If you're in a single basin, you'll be in business for a decade. But if you're in multi basins, you'll be in business for multi decades," and that Murphy's a multi-decade company, and we'll be in business for a very long time. We operate in four different places.
We've been a historic player in the Gulf of Mexico. We're a significant operator there with a very advantaged execution ability, formulated out of the Gulf and used practically all over the world. Been a 30 year plus veteran of East Coast Canada from a non-operated perspective and a long history of experience there. We have two significant onshore places in which we work on the Eagle Ford Shale, with over 1,200 locations to go there. Tupper Montney, a long futuristic view at LNG there and long-term gas. That's our long-term gas focus. Kaybob Duvernay, a place with a lot of activity and rig activity and activity by us. So we have three very good onshore businesses and two very successful long-term offshore businesses. What's unique to Murphy is a high-potential exploration business.
We today are drilling a well in the Gulf of Mexico that we just announced yesterday, with two very exceptional wells coming up in Vietnam, spudding at the end of this month, and a very unique position in Côte d'Ivoire, Africa. We have one of the leading balance sheets in all E&P. We're gonna be measured at 0.6 debt EBITDA in our company. I believe only one company may have a better balance sheet in that simple regard to Murphy. So we have the balance sheet that we need, and a long-term history of rewarding shareholders at Murphy. We've been paying a dividend since the year I was born in 1961.
Since the last eleven years, when I've been CEO, we've returned $3.7 billion to shareholders, including $1.8 billion of buybacks, and we've bought back $200 million of stock this year in buying stock today. Another unique thing about our company is meaningful board and management ownership. If you look at the insider list, which would be our full board, including myself and our named executive officers, we own 6% of our equity. Only Matador, a company, has the same ownership as Murphy. Over the 24 E&P companies, 20 of those companies' insider list own less than 2% of their equity. This is again another differentiator of our company, a long history of paying dividends and buying back stock, and exploration in a multi-basin company.
I worked with Kelly this week, my Vice President of IR, a long-term worker here at Murphy, yes, on the IR side, about a new slide that said, kind of, how do we allocate capital? So we just talked about Murphy at a glance, so how are we allocating capital? 85% of our capital is on the development of all the assets that we hold today. We execute accretive Gulf of Mexico projects, usually on the top of the list, but we run probably about one and a half drill ships a year in the Gulf of Mexico to do that.
We maintain a very solid business in the Gulf, in the onshore businesses, to maximize free cash flow, fixing our production in the Eagle Ford Shale, which is an oil-related basin at 30-35 thousand equivalents per day, and a long-term 500 million a day growth, which fuels our plant in the Tupper Montney. Of course, we have an exploration business as well. But today, as I've been meeting with investors all day, I'm trying to reiterate and explain to investors that in this, when we say Gulf of Mexico projects, these are real, known, real projects in development that we know today, and by 2030, we'll execute 29 projects in and around all the fields that we operate.
These fields, these projects are named and have the exact amount of CapEx, the exact amount of production, how much free cash flow and what these fields make. These projects should be thought of as a location in the Bakken, a location in the Eagle Ford, a location in Delaware, and a location in the Midland Basin. It's the same thing. They just happen to be offshore, and we have loads of them at very low breakeven prices. As we've done since COVID, we've had three expanded to four strategic priorities. We've gone kind of a long way in delevering our balance sheet to be a leader in balance sheet and E&P. We've lowered our long-term debt by 67% since COVID. We've lowered debt this year by $50 million and possibly will continue to lower debt the rest of the year.
Had a really exceptional year of executing in our onshore business, executing all the ways to guidance in our production, and progressing a field development we have in Africa, excuse me, in Vietnam, the Lac Da Vang field. On the exploration side, we recently drilled a discovery well with Oxy in the Gulf of Mexico. We spudded a new well today, and we're preparing to spud two very nice wells in Vietnam. But the added strategic priority is to return to our shareholders, which is historic part of our company. I guess it just sums it up. Year to date, we've bought $200 million of stock, and $50 million of stock since our earnings call on August the sixth.
And then we were purchasing this at $39 a share, of course, trading lower than that today in the market again at this time. I think the real differentiator here, again, we have a differentiated exploration business. We have a differentiated ownership. The differentiation here is a company that hasn't issued equity through the years. So when we're buying stock, only seven E&P companies, primarily just four, because the others are minuscule, have reduced the share count in their last eleven years. Only four people, significantly, being, Murphy being one of them. So when we repurchase these shares, we're really making a difference on our share count to increase our cash flow per share and earnings per share, and allow us in the future to have a dividend budget, if you will, to, to have very large dividend payments. Again, I've summarized this earlier.
This is our long-term debt reduction that we started at post-COVID, 66%. We have strong liquidity, very little bonds left in our business. A bond market wide open to Murphy, as you would anticipate with this type of balance sheet and this type of results. And then we have one, almost $1.3 billion of long-term debt at this time. We had a capital allocation framework that we disclosed two years ago in August, so at our earnings call recent, was the two-year anniversary of that disclosure. We've moved now to Murphy 3.0, and we're at a debt level I just mentioned, of $1.3 billion of long-term debt. The key word on this page in that dark blue box, is the word minimum.
That's a minimum of 50% of our adjusted free cash flow will be allocated to primarily buybacks, and the rest will be allocated to our balance sheet through the reduction of debt or building cash on the balance sheet. When we see our prices dislocated, we may hold back on paying down debt, but maintain the same long-term debt goal. Our adjusted free cash flow formula is shown here, and we also recently increased our share authorization. We're very, very serious about buying our equity at these depressed prices. Another strong suit of Murphy is really have the high ground on sustainability. We have a very robust sustainability report that was also filed in August. Some highlights of reports on the highest water recycling ever in our history, the lowest emissions intensity ever in history.
We have everything third-party assured and really making continued great progress here with our raters and everything around this part of the business. Murphy hasn't had a proxy proposal in over 12 years at, at Murphy Oil Corporation. What's new in the quarter? In the third quarter, we brought on a new well at our Khaleesi Mormont Samurai field. It's a Mormont number 3. It's flowing very nicely today. We had a long-term workover project called Niedermeyer online. We had another workover be done at Dalmatian 2, that's completed and online, and we're drilling a new well at Mormont today.
In the Eagle Ford, we've seen some very, very highly successful wells in the Tilden area with our new fracture techniques and our new plans, really bringing this out of the forefront back to a top asset, and including two refrac wells that we've done with great success as well, and we had a lot of non-op activity in Tilden this year with wells near our acreage. They, too, are performing very well. As I said a few minutes ago, we spudded a new well in the Gulf. We continue to buy stock, and of course, we're maintaining our production guidance and doing exceptionally well in that regard. That's our 2024 plan total overall for the third quarter, maintaining guidance there. We do have significant downtime anticipated by hurricanes. Without having that downtime will improve our production. We've been very fortunate.
I haven't seen any wood to knock on up here. It's just acrylic, but I will go with that. And we have some planned downtime that we have from time to time, and also been doing very well on CapEx guidance and keeping our CapEx for the whole year, and of course, our range of production for 2024. As we look in the North America, we did this, our only place where we guided production for the year, it's 98,000. Typically, we make near 100,000 barrels a day, equivalent in our onshore business, 25% oil. In the Eagle Ford, we have 20 operated wells to do this year. Almost all of them are online, except for ones for the fourth quarter. And I mentioned this earlier, extremely good results in Tilden.
All of our business in Canada is completed for the year. We're just in cash harvesting mode there. Our typical onshore budget is front-end loaded. We've been very successful at this, at maximizing free cash flow, which has allowed us to lower all the debt on our balance sheet and increase our dividend and do stock buybacks, post-COVID. A long history of that. In the offshore business, as I said earlier, this is a slide that we use, each and every time about all the projects that we have and when they come online. We're having a very good execution of late in the Gulf. Kodiak-4 was online in the second quarter. Another well at Mormont just flowed over the past weekend, a new well being drilled there.
As you see yesterday in the press, Chevron disclosed some critical information about the prolific St. Malo field, one of the top fields in the world, or the highest margin fields in the world, an enormous asset and a key part of our portfolio. We're a 20% owner of St. Malo. Water injection started there recently, and over a period of time, this water injection will allow us to build upward using the Chevron press release, of which Murphy agrees, 175 million barrel gross, of which we own 20%. Murphy, also, for everyone's knowledge, is a deeply experienced deepwater injection operator in Malaysia, and one of the leaders anywhere in the world in deepwater offshore water injection experience, and had a really good year at Lucius, with our partner, Oxy, as well. Excuse me, I have a drop of water here.
As we get into offshore Canada, too, had a really good quarter there. Been doing pretty well of late, and those assets, they also mark to Brent pricing, extremely high margins and very, very high cash flow ability coming out of the East Coast of Canada. As we went back into the Gulf of Mexico, had a lot of workovers to do this year, a real abnormal year from a workover expense perspective. It's all behind us now. All the work is complete. All the wells are flowing. I think oftentimes we're asked about the workover expense. It's a quite fair question. It comes off the top of free cash flow. I think what people really need to be asking is, is the subsurface responding? Are the wells flowing at the proper rate? Have you de-booked reserves associated with these workovers?
The answer is absolutely not, and we continue to have a strong resource base in the Gulf of Mexico. The Marmalard w ell is flowing, the Dalmatian well is flowing, and the Kodiak well is flowing from a non-op perspective, and the rig that worked on Dalmatian, which has just been flowing about a week, has moved to drill the new exploration well called Sebastian. This is an update on our Lac Da Vang field. We're very proud of this field. It's a place we farmed into probably 12 years ago. We're a 40% operator. We have a small team on the ground there executing this. For people not aware, Murphy had a very significant shallow water business in Malaysia. Two people in our executive team, Eric Hambly and Tom Mireles, both led efforts in our shallow water business there.
That's what brought us to the Cuu Long Basin, the top oil basin of Vietnam, where almost all of the energy of Vietnam is produced. There's a 100 million barrel field here. We've booked reserves here, and we see a 10,000 bbl-15,000 bbl a day peak oil production coming out of this project, with phase developments to make that last longer. And then we are progressing all the contracts. We're very pleased about the capital estimates we had to sanction there. And we should have first oil in 2026, and a limited amount of money spent this year as we award all these projects, anticipating awarding another key and final project in the coming days. As we look at our exploration business, we have a nice well we've drilled, Sebastian. It's not very large in size.
It's very near our Delta House project, or platform that we bought from Oxy back in 2018. This is a block that had this prospect located for some time, came together with a partner group here after our earnings call, and put this project together with us as operator, and we had a rig available from Dalmatian. We've got. We're already halfway finished drilling the well now. We're a little over $13 million into Murphy to drill this well, and this is one of these highly profitable, very accretive, tie-backs to our Delta House facility, where we have tying the infrastructure only three or four miles away. We also had a discovery well at Ocotillo early in the year with Oxy. We're 33% in both Oxy and Chevron.
We believe that, Oxy's planning on a delineation well later this year, and we're very, very proud of that project too. It has a lot of upside there and some other fault blocks. Again, in Vietnam, we just talked about the green area, which is the Lac Da Vang field, a very successful field that we're developing. It's been heavily delineated, and we drilled two very key wells near here that are very large in size. HSV well is an exploration well, they'll be spudding hopefully at the end of this month. It's a very large, resource base here of 170 million barrels mean, which will be very significant.
And then we're drilling another well to the north of that, right next to the field, called Lac Da Hong, LDH, which is a different type of prospect, a little bit more risk than the HSV well, and it'll be drilled last in the program. This is Jackup country, a place that we're very experienced at due to our experience in Malaysia. The rig's in country, coming to us soon, and we're very excited. Long-term history here is that PetroVietnam wanted us in their country because of our execution ability. The United States government and the State Department wants us in this country, that we came in in May through a series of events, did not have the capital to participate in the development plan.
Last May, they came forward and wanted to sign the field development plan, and that allowed us to break off into very, very nice exploration. We didn't want to explore without the field development plan approved, so this is part of the new business that we have that we're extremely proud of and very unique to us. We're sought after in these countries because it's important to Murphy when we take on a 100 million-barrel field. It may not be as important to a super major, but we have super major execution ability, and we all worked at super majors earlier in our career. As we look at going in the Tano Basin, Côte d'Ivoire, we're very fortunate to pick up this big lease before it became so famous here.
We're bookending around each side of our leasehold by significant discoveries by Eni, in which they have numerous press releases. We're tying together all the 3D seismic, and we're processing it from shore all the way out to deep water. The Baleine, the Baleine discovery by Eni, we have a lookalike in the Block CI-531. We're very excited about that. The Murene exploration success recently by Eni as well touches our block to the north, and we have a prospect in that block very similar to that one. This also came with another development called Paon. It was discovered by Tullow and Anadarko several years ago. There's a lot of information public about this. The government is very keen on us developing Paon.
We are keen on it as well, and we're making a lot of progress in working with them on that. So if you really take a look, we have a historic offshore Gulf of Mexico business, and we're bookended by Côte d'Ivoire and Vietnam. So in Côte d'Ivoire, we have a possible development in which the government wants us to submit a field development plan with numerous prospects of different sizes. And in Vietnam, we have a go-to development there that we farmed into and developed and gained field development plan approval while having significant exploration activities there. So we have two things the same, going on in two different countries that can really uplift our offshore production for years and years. We're very, very pleased about Paon, very pleased about future exploration here in Vietnam and the Gulf.
As you look ahead, we have a long-term plan here. It's filed every year at the beginning of the year. I think the long-term perspectives of the plan are fully in place, the debt target goals maintained, Vietnam production being maintained. But I looked at five-year plan. I was looking at this today with many investors. Now we'll be adding a new year to the plan in 2029. We're talking about a company, by 2029, at $75 oil, has an ability to cash return over $3 billion to shareholders and still have $2.3 billion of cash on the balance sheet without exploration success. We have plans in our company reviewed by our board that goes to 2042.
We're a multi-decade player with significant amount of assets yet to be developed, and exploring for more in the Gulf, and significant locations yet to be drilled in our onshore business. So we're accelerating returns. One of our goals this year, which we've done so, is increase dividend and more buybacks. We're exceeding production guidance across all of our onshore. Had an incredible year in the onshore, a nice well program, really coming to our own on operations in the Gulf. A little bit of struggle earlier in the year, doing very well today. Have discovery in the Gulf, hope to drill another one here in a couple of weeks, and a very significant exploration program in Vietnam on the backdrop of buying a lot of stock, with a lot more stock purchase ahead. So that's all I have today.
Betty, if you'd like to ask some questions, or audience, or how would you like to proceed?
I'll start, kick off with the Q&A. Maybe focusing on this new Chevron update.
Right.
of yesterday about the waterflood.
Right.
What does that mean in terms of volume or CapEx for Murphy? When do you expect is that more of a 2025 event, or will we start seeing some of that in 2024?
When we bought the Petrobras assets, soon after that, Petrobras owned a part of St. Malo, 25%. Today, Petrobras would own 5%. We would own 20% through our MP GOM NCI subsidiary. This is a very prolific field that got bigger the whole time. Every time we drilled the water injection wells or production wells, the oil in place of the field grew. This is a very successful field subsurface. It's been a big part of our portfolio, and we're very, very proud of it. The water injection capital is behind us. So today, when Chevron noted yesterday at the water injections, become that means they've put out massive water injection pumps, filtering systems, power generation, wells, pipelines. It also includes some subsea pumps to increase enhanced oil recovery as well.
So all that's behind us, the CapEx is behind us, and all of it is inside our guidance. Next year, at Murphy, we hope to see our share go up 1,500 bbl a day, and the whole thing go up 3,000- 5,000 bbl a day in 2026 and 2027. That would be in our long-term guidance, and we've been after this for a long time. So now, post the drilling, more oil in place, a bigger field, all data pointing to connectivity. It'll take some period of time for that connectivity to be seen in gauges in these wells. At that time, you can advance the reserve, bookings, which are quite large, and I mentioned a few years ago.
When you have major water injection, a big cohesive field like this, it raises up and lowers the decline and raises up the plateau longer, so the plateau doesn't decline as much as normal. This has become a very key asset. It's a very key asset for Chevron. Chevron is doing extremely well in the Gulf of Mexico. It's noted in their release yesterday, discussed, I'm sure, here, and we're very, very happy to be their partner and fortunate to be involved with St. Malo.
Great. Are there similar water flood opportunities in GOM? And how should we think about the capital, the return of these type of project versus new drills?
As noted yesterday, Chevron has another plan at Anchor.
Yeah.
We're reviewing one in Khaleesi Mormont. We were very successful at doing this in Asia. We're leading experienced holder on this. It involves drilling subsea water wells and buying equipment such as manifolds and Christmas trees and significant power generation on your platform. I think this will become more common in the Gulf. I think it will become a more standard. But I always think about this, Betty, it's like anything in deep water. If the amount of reserves that you're doing are developed for $15 or less, if the uplift in the production or the reserve base is at a level of $12-$15 per barrel, then the project will be a very successful project. That's what St. Malo is, and that's how these things are to be judged.
The development cost in Vietnam is less than $12 a barrel. Our development cost in Khaleesi, Mormont, Samurai, is probably $9. So when you have these type of projects, that means their ultimate DD&A become at that rate, they become very, very successful projects at any type of oil price. And it maintains the reserve base, and it lowers the decline, and I think you'll see more of it.
Got it. This Sebastian exploration well.
Right.
On the program, is there something that changed that you saw that, like, added this well to this year's?
We've known about this for a while. It's a rock that we had another well in that was producing, and over the long-term view of that field, there's some work. We need to drill another well for that well. Then we decided, let's just drill the new prospect. When you're in the oil business, Murphy's in the oil business, you don't share everything on the call because I have private equity partners sometimes, that, I need to be careful what I say. If I say I'm doing something, I tell the world like I am today, then they may take advantage of me, and so sometimes we keep those things private till we have everything lined up on the well. And the well's very inexpensive to us, but a very, very high rate of return upon success.
We just snuck the well in. That's what happens when you're in the business, and you're able to be in the know and work on projects, and people respect you as an operator, and those unique things come Murphy's way, quite often, actually.
Right. When should we expect results from that Sebastian?
Oh, that will be done in three or four weeks, I would imagine.
Okay, great. Shifting to Côte d'Ivoire, the Paon gas development seems to be getting more traction, both from the government side and.
Right.
And how you guys are talking about it. What are the next steps around that project specifically, and then, when will you start growing your own exploration well?
Right. Thank you. Very good question. Thanks for asking it. Point, when we took on the blocks in Côte d'Ivoire, and their government's a very close partner. We're you have to keep in mind and back up, we've worked all over the world. We have unique relationships with national oil companies, again, due to the importance it is to us. A great relationship with them. This is a discovery that's gas and oil, and they're working toward a lot of power generation in their company and in their country, and they like gas production. We have to agree on the price of the gas, and we also have a requirement to submit a field development plan by the end of 2025 to them as part of it, or we will have to let this go.
So we're in close discussions with them about a gas price to go forward. I would consider those progressions going well, and they had a contingent of all their top ministry and everything to do with their company in our office. We met with them two weeks ago, and we're very pleased about that, but we have to get that straight, and then can go on. As to the prospects we have, and they're numerous, I would hope we drill a well at the end of next year and maybe follow on in the next year with another, 'cause we have different type of prospects, that we can drill there. If we were to move forward on Paon, we may need to drill an additional well there as well. These are not expensive wells.
These are shallower and easier wells to drill than some of the deeper stuff in the Gulf of Mexico.
And then we'll learn more about the size of the Paon development.
Right.
Project later on.
Right.
Okay, great.
Obviously, it has the size, or we wouldn't be participating in it.
Right. Great. Well, I think there's t he Vietnam wells, good to hear that it's, that rig is almost on site, and then.
Right.
I'm sure there's looking forward to hear more about that. I imagine that's more likely a next year, early, early next year, type of update on Vietnam exploration?
Probably so.
Okay, great.
It's hard to say, but probably so, yes.
Okay, great. Well, thank you very much. I think.
Thank you. Any other questions today?
All right, thank you.
I appreciate it, Betty, and thank you for having us, and everyone have a good day. Thank you.
Thank you.