Great. We're gonna keep things moving. Thrilled to have Murphy Oil to present again this year. They've been long-term supporters of the conference. Roger's been here every year since we started the conference eight years ago. Roger Jenkins has been CEO of Murphy since 2013. That's 10 years. A lot of volatility in the space, but thrilled to have Roger give his presentation this afternoon. Thanks, Roger.
Thank you, everyone. I appreciate J.P. Morgan for their conference. We're a long-term participant. Of course, J.P. Morgan's a long-time history of our banking within our company, a great relationship there. I have the cautionary statement, as most presentations have these days. We'll, of course, follow that and more information of that on our website. Agenda today, we're gonna talk about our company at a glance at a high level. Today, we published some new slides for this conference called a quarterly update, that we do often when we're out on the road, and focus a lot of the presentation on that.
Our priorities remain the same. A look at some of our portfolio and looking ahead in our company. A very simple business. We operate in just three places. In North America, we're an onshore player in the Eagle Ford Shale on private lands, have been there for a very long time, with a unique set of long-term locations. We feel we're under-drilled in that place, with new technology coming to our advantage. A significant business in onshore Canada, where we've been for over 70 years, and a primary gas business in the Tupper Montney, and a ever-increasing business in Duvernay around us, very valuable business.
A very unique player in the offshore. Been in offshore business since the mid-1950s. A real king of our portfolio is the King's Quay facility, doing extremely well in the Gulf and a large producer there. We have a unique exploration portfolio for a company of our size and have been in the exploration business for decades and decades. In the first quarter, made about $172,000, guiding to the $177,000 range, midpoint this time. We have a 700 million barrel reserve base that's been quite consistent for well over a decade.
Why our company? From the highest level, we're a sustainable company, and when we say sustainable, oftentimes that's with the connotation of carbon, which we have a great low-intensity carbon business, one of the leaders in all of industry on that due to our strong offshore business. It's also sustainable with multi-decades of locations, undrilled locations, and we're now seeing ourselves as a conventional player in the offshore with an unconventional business backing that up instead of the other way around, which makes us a unique situation. High potential exploration. We announced a new exploration activity today.
Strong generator of cash flow, make free cash flow in all of our businesses. Have a long 61-year history of paying dividends in this company. We're a leader in returning to shareholders in our market cap space. Of course, we're supported by multi-decade founding family ownership on our board, significant ownership with at-the-table results, including myself. Second quarter update for us. We're advancing our exploration portfolio and program. We have a significant well being drilled in the Gulf of Mexico called Chinook #7.
This is in the shadows of an FPSO we operate, that came to us through the JV with Petrobras. That well's currently drilling and doing well to plan. Had a new country entry in Côte d'Ivoire, been working on that for over one year. I'll talk about that more in a second. Have a new word of a field development plan approval in Vietnam.
This has been a long-awaited approval. We're very excited about this. Will open up further exploration for us. In the onshore and offshore business, since it's all about in our company, focusing on getting the wells on time, on schedule, and producing to their ability. We're doing a very good job of that and having a really good year and maintaining all of our guidance ranges. Oftentimes in our company, we're asked about Terra Nova. Terra Nova, significant asset, East Coast of Canada. It's greatly delayed by the operator there.
What's positive about that story is we're able to overcome Terra Nova and handle our original guidance with the outstanding work in the Gulf and in the Eagle Ford Shale. A little bit about our country entry. Côte d'Ivoire, next door to Ghana. Ghana, of course, has the big, successful Jubilee field. It's a significant production for both Tullow and Kosmos, multi-hundred million barrel field. TEN, also a big development in Ghana.
Coming into the eastern side of our block is a very large discovery called Baleine, operated by Eni. Multiple hundreds of millions of barrels here that they're gonna be developing and ordering FPSOs for. As you march down our acreage position here in the Block 102 in the top of these shallow water, historic-type opportunities. Moving into the Block CI-531 , we have a lookalike structure to the Eni discovery, a carbonate discovery, a different type of discovery to opportunity for us. In the middle block, CI-103 is a long-term discovery by Tullow, operated by Anadarko in 2013- 2016.
If you Google this, there's a lot of information around this block and a lot of information around flow tests and rigs and operatorship, and it kind of fell off the radar. We feel possibly because of the gas, need for gas for power generation in the country, which has greatly improved. Part of the request of our this was for Murphy to file a field development plan with them on this, which we hope to commercialize that over a time period. In 709, be a large block with multi features like Jubilee, more of a turbidite-type play there. Very exciting new entry for us.
As we look into Vietnam, it's a place we've been in for a very long time. We were recruited into Vietnam by PetroVietnam because of our long-time success in Malaysia. We had a very successful shallow water business there to complement our deep water business, both in gas and oil there, partnering with PETRONAS. We farmed in years ago to something called LDV or Lac Da Vang. It's a very successful field with multiple penetrations and well tests. Been long awaiting the field development plan approval that came kind of early in our surprise here by Petrovietnam.
We're very happy about that. What it also does is open up additional exploration areas for us nearby. We've been holding back on the exploration due to the time it takes to do the field development plan, and we feel very well positioned here. These two announcements are adding to the longevity of our offshore business, our very strong, highly free cash flow delivering conventional business, and things that we do very, very well in executing.
Our priorities have not changed for a long time here, two to three years, of de-lever our balance sheet, execute, and explore. This year, we added a fourth priority to return to our shareholders. We have a big goal to reduce debt this year, hope to equitize our equity through debt paydown to help our stock improve. Have a pretty lofty goal here. Need some help on prices. Not getting that help today, but still, we'll be reducing debt this year. We're in 2.0 of a capital allocation framework, which would allocate adjusted free cash flow, 75% for debt, 25% for stock buybacks.
We feel we'll be executing that the second half of the year. Quite proud of that. Improved our credit rating. Execution, as just mentioned, doing very well across all fronts there. In exploration, we had a successful well we announced last quarter at Longclaw, in the shadow of King's Quay. We're drilling a well in the shadow of an FPSO at Chinook, we're back to an OSO area, an area that was very hot in the last lease sale with a new data set. That's a really coming area for us. We're partnered with Oxy there. Very proud of that relationship with them.
We're the operator. Of course, our Côte d'Ivoire business that I just talked about at length. Returning, we're in a mode of returning to our shareholders here real soon, and I feel really well positioned around that going forward this year and into next, for sure. This is like a money slide for us. In this midcap space, we are the leader in returns to shareholders over a 10-year period. It's not even close.
It's almost a tenfold reason to own our stock, and we have a business today that can deliver this and beyond for the next decade back to our shareholders. As I said earlier, my entire life, we paid a dividend in this company. I'm 61 years old, and we have never issued equity since we went public, and only three companies in this market cap group did not issue equity, and primarily, most of them impaired it in shale when they did it. We feel that we're very uniquely positioned to return back to shareholders here very strongly going forward. This is a picture of our framework that's been quite disclosed. It's maintained.
Everything about it's the same, and we're in the middle feature of that today and feel real good about that and very excited about getting into that and think that we have the ability of our stock price to run up as we execute on this plan, and all systems are go in our company to do that today. Looking closer, our portfolio only made 27,000 Eagle Ford the first quarter. We're gonna make in mid-30s this time, doing extremely well there.
Very successful refrack performance in that business, so a lot of success with that earlier announced. Very nice area coming into Tilden with some new fracking techniques and new fracking technology that we're employing. Had a continued outperformance of prior years in Eagle Ford. We're Order of Merit winner by Arun, and the Eagle Ford is the top operator last year, noted by J.P. Morgan.
A really nice business here, where when we collapsed capital in 2016 and 2020, we're now didn't drill it all up with the prior technology, and we feel we're one of the more under-drilled running room players in the Eagle Ford ahead, and we're very, very well positioned there. In our Montney business, actually, we did some forward sales to execute to fill this plant. Those are now with the crazy ups and downs of the market, we find ourselves almost advantaged in the gas price there.
With very, very low netbacks and a differentiated view of forward sales and some gas coming out of ACO, going into Malin, and etc , where we have very, very high netbacks. A very low risk, long-term business in the Montney that we think could be helpful with the offtake of LNG in 25 and 26, where we've partnered with all partners involved with that LNG project before. Kaybob Duvernay is something we pulled into the deck just to kind of remind shareholders again of how fully delineated it is. We've described all of our locations.
You can see we drilled across the play. There's public results of these wells. This is a very oily basin for us, very unique. A lot of activity in that area today. This is our go-to in the future of our Eagle Ford and Duvernay business to maintain our sustainable company for decades, with ample locations to go in a place that we fully delineated successfully. Really nice offshore business, making 90,000 barrels a day plus there every day.
Brought on some wells early in the year, all online. Have a big set of work in the future. We're moving a rig on to Dalmatian in the next month or so to complete a well there that's previously drilled. Another opportunity to drill a well in Mormont, another field that we bought a few years ago that's a very successful field. Lucius, where we partner with Oxy, is a non-op. Got some work at the end of the year. Saint- Malo continues, one of the crown jewels of Chevron's portfolio.
We're quite proud to be a partner with Chevron there. King's Quay continued to just be a home run ball for us for month after month. Another production record set there a few days ago, 130,000 barrels a day from only eight wellbores there, with a very high uptime.
This is now the, you know, the crown jewel of our portfolio. Big projects coming. Terra Nova will produce at the end of the year. We're quite confident about that. We've had a team visit that. Saint- Malo, again, another large field operated by Chevron. Very good field. Exploration, a lot going on there. We had a successful well at Longclaw. This is drilled right at outside of King's Quay doorstep there. A big well at OSO with a lot of activity in the recent lease sale, coming back there in the third and fourth quarter, and Chinook, ongoing today.
Looking ahead in our company, we really want to advertise at this conference, have been advertising out on the road a good bit about the unique nature of our company, as we have the inventory to drill in our onshore business with a new technological-based onshore execution plan that's second to none. Multi-decades of inventory, multi-decades of low-cost wells to drill, doing extremely well here from a sustainable company approach in our company today, with a big conventional business in the offshore. With our offshore, too, we have locations there.
We've been mimicking onshore location, where these are absolutely certified, known things to do, sidetracks, recompletions, additional wells to drill, tiebacks. We've distinguished them all. We know the size of them.
We know the F&D of these opportunities. It's very, very positive for us to keep this business running flat through 2027 without any exploration success of any kind, just executing what we have. Today, we've announced a couple of things that can enhance that and build that even further into the future. This is what we're trying to do here in the short term, trying to pay down debt.
Need a little price help to make this level. We will have significant paydown this year. We have a low reinvestment rate in our company, a light CAGR, like most companies do today, with a big position to pay down debt and return to shareholders. Trying to maintain a lower CapEx level best we can.
Enhance payouts to shareholders is our calling card, and it's been our company history, and we're taking this further into the long term as well. We'll be a larger company, still maintaining our oil weighting through our Eagle Ford Kaybob, and of course, our offshore business, and through the two announcements today. Again, continued low reinvestment percentages, and we'll be achieving the metrics of an investment-grade company. Quite proud of that, of course.
Allocating capital into high-returning investments, which we have a load of today. That's what we have, and I'll close out with this. We're a diverse, multi-basin, conventional, unconventional business, low break-even wells, and a big future of things to do in both businesses, on and offshore. We have low-cost exploration optionality.
We're talking about a deal yesterday where we bought the whole Gulf of Mexico for 1 lease sale in the Gulf, is what this cost. This is low-cost entry, a lot of upside, based really on our reputation as a leading deepwater executor, is why Côte d'Ivoire wants to partner with us. A lot of people want those blocks. We're very proud of that. We're a high-performing execution company.
We have a big advantage of working in the deepwater, where we've built enormous assets all over the world, FPSOs, FSOs, FPS, drilling completion, and also a very successful shallow water business in Malaysia that we're now taking into Vietnam, with opportunity in Côte d'Ivoire as well. We have a durable return set up for our company shareholders going forward, with a long-term dividend level and a history of returning with a big forward look at that. We're quite proud of that. We think that's unique for us. That's all I have, Arun. I'll take your questions from the group. Thank you.
Okay. Well, let me start with your list on slide six, Roger, and what's new. Let's talk about the Chinook number 7 well in the Gulf of Mexico. Could you tell us what your thesis is on that well, where you're at in terms of drilling operations, and, you know, potential chances for success?
Well, we've disclosed in our slide about Chinook, we feel it's a 50 million barrel minimum opportunity on a mean basis. It can be also larger. This is a completely undrilled fault block of the Chinook. There's two fields that are called Cascade Chinook, and it has an FPSO parked in the middle of those two fields. It's one of two FPSOs that operate in the Gulf of Mexico.
We also have operated FPSOs around the world and have the ability to operate that. It's a very highly efficiently run business. We need it to get larger to help the operating expenses of the FPSO. When we became a partner at Saint- Malo with Chevron, we learned a lot about the Wilcox. We're the leader in deepwater water injection globally in the world by taking a long look at Saint- Malo, it too, has some undrilled fault blocks.
There are some additional unfilled, undrilled fault blocks around St. Malo that we've seen success. We decided to go form a program to test the big undrilled fault block here. It's a 28,000 foot, pretty deep well, well along in drilling it now, and real pleased with the execution, the cost, and our ability to execute there, and in the middle of it right now.
When do you expect to get the TD?
We would hope to have results on our call, but may not. Not sure.
Okay. Okay, great. Let's talk about the new country entry, Côte d'Ivoire. Could you talk about maybe the fiscal regime in that country?
I think, we're an international player and been involved in international for several years. We're back more domestic now. This is a production-sharing contract. Typically, in those environments, you would be benchmarking yourself on a total government take in the 1970s. We find this one to be lower. It's probably one of the better production-sharing agreements we've had in a while, hence taking a long time.
We have a good partner there. They welcome us there, and we feel we have an advantage PSC. We rarely share those details, but I would find it on a benchmarking basis internationally to be very well-positioned.
Okay. How much data do you have, in terms of the block and just the quality of data, and how long do you think it will take you to do your science?
What's unique about this and what's different in exploration, post the 2012, 2013, 2014 boom, was that there's a lot of 3D data. There's 3D data shot across this entire area. It's owned by a major seismic company. We'll be purchasing that data and reprocessing a lot of that data over the next year.
We have no well commitments in a two-year period, so we need to get after it and see what we want to do and then extend with drilling in the future. It'd be highly unlikely for us not to find things to drill, because there's a lot of leads and prospects and offshooting a major discovery by Eni. Very pleased about how all that's looking.
Just your technical team, what kind of experience do they have in this basin?
Well, we have some Anadarko people on our team. When you're a smaller, stay with it, deep water company, people that were involved in deep water want to be with you, in a way. You can be with a super major or Murphy, in a way. Anadarko people have come our way through the transition to Oxy, so we have some people that are familiar with it.
We've been looking in this area for a very long time, and very familiar with turbidite fan plays. We've been in four or five different countries in Africa. We've been back in Gabon in the '70s, so we had a big development in Congo. We're very astute about international Africa operations, and really not a big move for us, really.
Okay. Can you do your technical work, in Houston, or do you have to set up an office?
Yes, that's the plan. That's another thing I didn't get into today. I don't know if people are appreciating the changes in the company post-COVID, with the closing of our corporate historic office in El Dorado, the closing of our Calgary office, the change of our G&A, the change in our organization, the one culture company, and the strong execution building off of our long-term history of being a great deep water player and also onshore as well.
That's part of our, you know, secret sauce. Today, we're doing very well in our organization in Houston, probably best ever company ever been run. We're real proud of that. We're able to run things out of there and look at the seismic there and run that like it's in the Gulf, really well positioned there.
Okay. Let's talk about the Vietnam, the LDV field. You have government approval for your development plan. What does that really entail?
This was a discovered field. It had four penetrations and two different well tests. It's a unique feature laid out on top of a basement rock that we've been working on for quite a while. We then had to do an extensive field development plan. They have a very extensive field development plan process. We completed that.
It was held back a lot during COVID. It's a country where it quite helpful to have executive management travel there as part of the ongoing process. We're very used to that culture and very used to working in Southeast Asia, but there's a real issue during COVID, both this getting approved and traveling there, if you will. That's, of course, greatly improved. They recently visited our office, and this has been going on for a while.
We didn't know when we'd get it approved, and suddenly it's approved, and they want to work. This is the key energy basin of Vietnam. We're the only Western company to be invited to be in this basin because we were so successful in Malaysia, in shallow water, also deep water as well. Been part of our business for a while. We didn't really have the capital.
They didn't have it approved, and now it's coming into a thing where it can fit into our future. The big main thing is it opens up further exploration. These are jackup country, shallow water, 40 meters of water, a lot of opportunity, very simple type structures to drill. There's enormous infrastructure here, FPSOs, FSOs, pipelines, gas to shore. This is not remote. We have a significant off exploration block immediately to the south of what's in this slide, and we probably have seven to eight great prospects there.
Should we expect Murphy to be committing development capital to Vietnam next year, the following year?
Probably not much.
Okay.
We'll be sanctioning it probably at the end of this year.
Okay.
We'll announce it when we do that.
Okay, great. The other update, in the U.S. onshore and offshore, everything is going according to plan. You're reiterating your 2Q and full year guidance right in, is correct?
Absolutely.
Okay, great.
Doing extremely well.
Great. Well, let's shift gears, talk a little bit about cash return. You know, obviously, we've been some volatility in commodity prices. When do you expect Murphy to reach the balance sheet threshold to implement Murphy 2.0, of your capital return framework?
Second, third, fourth quarter, for sure.
Third, fourth quarter of this year. Okay. Just maybe for the generalists in the audience, what does that entail in terms of cash return when you get to that threshold?
It would depend on oil price and depend on the adjusted free cash flow. If you look at the detailed formula in the deck, which you've seen many times around. As you noted to our investors, there was a significant contingent payments to be paid that hurt this framework. Those are behind us now. It's also on the end of a very successful M&A, months and months, paid out, unreal success M&A that had contingent payments.
That's the way I like to think about the positive side of it. You can picture that being gone, our capital decreasing. We have only one rig in Eagle Ford, about to let it go. We've quit drilling in the Montney. We're moving our drillship off Chinook into lower working interest in the Gulf. Our CapEx is decreasing greatly. We've already spent 70% of our CapEx for the year, so we should have a lot of free cash flow as per that formula, and try to honor that formula.
Let's talk about A&D activity. We have seen a lot of consolidation, within the broader E&P space.
Yes.
Can you talk about any deal flow that you're seeing in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico backyard?
There's a lot of deals. There's a lot of people wanting a lot of money for it. We have a unique way, a proprietary way, quite frankly, of how we value 1P, 2P, and the kind of things we're looking to do. We're not, don't usually buy a lot of older fields with asset retirement obligation on decline. That's not really our game. We need to bring something to the table through our development ability.
We've, of course, been looking at the Petrobras deal for quite a long time. That's held up there in a moratorium, if you will, on their, on their, on their own. That would be something we're focused on, but really sticking to our execution, drilling great wells and exploration, entering new acreage, field development plans approval.
Our onshore business doing extremely well, both in Canada and Eagle Ford, and just focusing on the ball in the fairway and let these things come to us. It's always good to be in an M&A position where you don't need it and never need to do it, and that's the way to do it. That's the best position to be.
Let's talk about your key development project, Khaleesi, Mormont, Samurai.
Right.
I think you brought on the Samurai number 5 well?
Yes.
What is your expectation to keep, you know, production flat from the King's Quay facility?
Well, we said it'd be flat for thre to four years. We stand behind that. Of course, the field is probably larger than we thought, and we'll probably be adding some additional wells to that, probably maybe up to three over the next three to four years, and maybe even to next year. Well, it's a very prolific field, 130,000 barrels gross from, you know, only eight wells.
I was told earlier this week, it's one of the largest producing platforms in the entire Gulf today. That includes all the super majors. This is a hell of a big field, and great for our Samurai exploration success flowing to it as well, at a very favorable position to us, and just hit one out of the park there, and real fortunate and really glad to have it.
Okay. OSO, when do you plan to get the rig? I believe that rig is in Suriname.
Yeah. It's I believe it's for the Apache TotalEnergies in Suriname. I'm not sure of that, but it's coming to the Gulf in the third quarter with the equipment we need to continue drilling that well. We have a new plan to execute that well. Been working closely with our partner, Oxy, there as well, who have experience with this equipment is too, and looking forward to drilling that.
It's a big focus of the last lease sale, and there's a new ocean bottom node seismic survey taken in that region, which we, of course, participated in. A lot of activity coming out before that date and in the lease sale by almost all super majors, and then we're active and have some nice prospects there, too, for the long term.
Okay. You mentioned you sent a Murphy project team out to Canada, to look at the Suncor-operated-
Yes
T he status of that. For the investors here, I get a lot of questions on, you know, what's going on with this project, obviously operated by Suncor. Can you give us an update of your understanding of where we're at in terms of this in-field extension of project?
Well, number one, as I said earlier, the positive thing for us is we've overcome that with our outstanding results. That's super positive. That's the thing to focus on, I think. It's a big, old, super major executed thing. It's late. I'm sure Suncor doesn't want it to be late, and Suncor's had some executive management change there, which they're working through. It's impacted that schedule, probably. We see it turning around, a very focused team by Suncor.
We took our best and brightest development people there, and with Cenovus, made a two or thre-day detailed trip across the FPSO. We feel comfortable about the execution. Photos of the vessel look really nice-looking vessel. It's not some, hodgepodge creature out there. It's quite positive. Suncor is a very professional company and improving. We see that they've added the focus, and we think it'll flow at the end of the year, and our team feels that way, and that's how we're planning for it.
Would you characterize that the things needed to get this facility started, are these, you know, relatively straightforward things?
Yes. This is around identification of further work past the shipyard work of corrosion and some matters that need to be improved. This is not one-off technology or large compressors or things that would have a long delivery line. Initial work, you have to also kinda, always kind of think about what's positive about it. We've made $3 billion free cash flow in our history in East Coast Canada.
This project is funded by the government without a working interest, leading to a 100% rate of return. The economics are still very robust. This is Brent-weighted oil. This is Brent plus $2 or $3, typically. This is a good asset. It's late. You know, in 1923, Murphy found part of a big discovery near El Dorado. It was so big of a discovery, it probably was a little bit late. Everyone focuses on that, so sometimes it happens, but it's all break-even margin business.
Okay. Well, we have a couple of minutes left. I'll turn it over for any investor questions. Okay. If not, I'll keep going.
Oh, yeah, you can go all day.
I probably could.
It just went with you for an hour about a month ago.
Is there a closet lithium play at Murphy?
It'd be a small silver closet. We for a long time, owned the brine royalty rights near our hometown. Around that area, Like I just mentioned, in 1923, a major oil discovery there, and due to the outlay of rocks and the sediments there's a brine businesses there. We receive a royalty from the brine water and have received this for years.
We probably make $6 million or $7 million a year on this royalty. When the particles of lithium are in the water, we feel that we'd be owed a royalty for the lithium as well, and this will be decided ultimately by the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission, headquartered in El Dorado, and that will be brought forward to that. We're monitoring that with our legal team.
This will not be the end-all new King's Quay for us, but it could be a decent little business. Folding money, as they say in Arkansas, and so we'll, we're, you know, uniquely kind of positioned there. The recent acquisition by the super major ExxonMobil is really to the west of El Dorado and not where we are located.
All right, Roger, with that, we'll cut things off. Thanks for your time.
Thank you. It's always a pleasure to be with you.