Good morning. My name is Christie, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, we would like to welcome everyone to the Occidental Petroleum second quarter 2012 earnings release conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the pound key. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Christopher Stavros. Please go ahead, sir.
Thanks, Christie. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Occidental Petroleum's second quarter 2012 earnings conference call. Joining us on the call this morning from Los Angeles are Stephen Chazen, Oxy's President and Chief Executive Officer, Jim Lienert, Oxy's Chief Financial Officer, Bill Albrecht, President of Oxy's Oil & Gas business in the Americas, and Sandy Lowe, President of our International Oil and Gas operations. In just a moment, I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Jim Lienert, who will review our financial and operating results for this year's second quarter. Steve Chazen will then follow with comments on our performance, an update on our capital program, and production for 2012, and including our outlook for the second half of this year.
Our second quarter 2012 earnings press release, investor relations supplemental schedule, conference call presentation slides, which refer to both Jim's and Steve's remarks, can be downloaded off of our website at www.oxy.com. I'll now turn the call over to Jim Lienert. Jim, please go ahead.
Thank you, Chris. Net income was $1.3 billion, or $1.64 per diluted share in the second quarter of 2012, compared to $1.8 billion or $2.23 per diluted share in the second quarter of 2011, and $1.6 billion or $1.92 per diluted share in the first quarter of 2012. All the drop in the second quarter earnings compared to the first quarter of 2012 was attributable to the decline in commodity prices. Worldwide oil and domestic gas and NGL prices were significantly lower during the quarter. Here's a segment breakdown for the second quarter. Oil and gas segment earnings for the second quarter of 2012 were $2 billion, compared with $2.5 billion in the first quarter of 2012, and $2.6 billion in the second quarter of 2011.
In the oil and gas segment, the second quarter 2012 daily production was 766,000 barrels, the highest volume in the company's history for the second consecutive quarter, and was up 7% from the same period of 2011. Our total domestic production was 462,000 barrels per day, the seventh consecutive domestic quarterly volume record for the company. Our total domestic production was 9% higher than the second quarter of 2011. Latin America volumes were 33,000 barrels per day. Colombia's production of 31,000 barrels a day improved 7,000 barrels a day from the first quarter of 2012, due to significantly lower levels of insurgent activity in the second quarter. In the Middle East region, volumes were 271,000 barrels per day. In Oman, the second quarter production was 72,000 barrels per day, 2,000 barrels lower than the first quarter volumes.
In Qatar, the second quarter production was 74,000 barrels per day, 2,000 barrels higher than the first quarter volumes. For Dolphin and Bahrain combined, daily production increased 7,000 barrels from the first quarter, which include planned plant shutdowns in Dolphin. The rest of the Middle East/North Africa production decreased by 10,000 barrels per day. Oil prices and production sharing, and similar contract factors did not significantly impact this quarter's production volumes compared to the previous quarter or the second quarter of 2011. Our second quarter sales volumes were 759,000 barrels per day, slightly lower than our production volumes due to the timing of liftings in the Middle East/North Africa. Second quarter 2012 realized prices were lower for our products compared to the first quarter of the year. Our worldwide crude oil realized price was $99.34 per barrel, a decrease of about 8%.
Worldwide NGLs were $42.06 per barrel, a decrease of about 20%, and domestic natural gas prices were $2.09 per Mcf, a decline of 26%. Second quarter 2012 realized prices were also lower than the second quarter 2011 prices for all our products. On a year-over-year basis, price decreases were 4% for the worldwide crude oil, 27% for worldwide NGLs, and 51% for domestic natural gas. Realized oil prices for the quarter represented 106% of the average WTI and 91% of the average Brent price. Realized NGL prices were 45% of WTI, and realized domestic gas prices were 92% of the average NYMEX price. Price changes at current global prices affect our quarterly earnings before income taxes by $38 million for a $1 per barrel change in oil prices, and $8 million for a $1 per barrel change in NGL prices.
A swing of $0.50 per million BTUs in domestic gas prices affects quarterly pre-tax earnings by about $35 million. These price change sensitivities include the impact of production sharing contract volume changes on income. Oil and gas cash production costs were $14.50 a barrel for the first six months of 2012, compared with last year's 12-month cost of $12.84 a barrel. The cost increase reflects higher well maintenance activity, in part reflecting our higher well count, higher work overactivity, and higher support and injection costs. Taxes other than on income, which are directly related to product prices, were $2.46 per barrel for the first six months of 2012, similar to last year's comparable period. Second quarter exploration expense was $96 million.
Chemical segment earnings for the second quarter of 2012 were $194 million, compared to $184 million in the first quarter of 2012 and $253 million for the second quarter of 2011. The sequential quarterly improvement was due to improved PVC and VCM margins, driven primarily by lower ethylene costs. The year-over-year decrease was the result of lower domestic and export caustic volumes, lower VCM export demand, and lower PVC and VCM export prices, partially offset by lower natural gas and ethylene costs. Midstream segment earnings were $77 million for the second quarter of 2012, compared to $131 million in the first quarter of 2012 and $187 million in the second quarter of 2011. The decline in earnings was mostly in the marketing and trading businesses, and to a lesser degree in the gas plants, reflecting lower NGL prices, partially offset by improvements in the pipeline businesses.
The worldwide effective tax rate was 40% for the second quarter of 2012. Our second quarter U.S. and foreign tax rates are included in the investor relations supplemental schedules. Cash flow from operations for the first six months of 2012 was $6 billion. We used $5.1 billion of the company's total cash flow to fund capital expenditures and $1 billion for acquisitions. Financial activities, which included dividends paid, stock buybacks, and a $1.75 billion borrowing during the quarter, provided a net $800 million of cash flow. These and other net cash flows result in a $4.4 billion cash balance at June 30th. Capital expenditures for the first six months of 2012 were $5.1 billion, of which $2.7 billion was spent in the second quarter. Year-to-date capital expenditures by segment were 80% in oil and gas, 15% in midstream, and the remainder in chemicals.
The Al Hosn Shah gas project made up about 11% of the total capital spending for the first six months of 2012. Our acquisitions for the first six months of 2012 were $1 billion, mostly consisting of bolt-on acquisitions in the Williston Basin, South Texas, and the Permian. The weighted average basic shares outstanding for the first six months of 2012 were 810.4 million, and the weighted average diluted shares outstanding were 811.2 million. Fully diluted shares outstanding at the end of the quarter were approximately 810 million. Our debt to capitalization ratio was 16%, and at the end of the second quarter, we issued $1.75 billion of senior notes at a weighted average interest rate of 2.4%, which brought the company's average effective borrowing rate down to 3%.
Copies of the press release announcing our second quarter earnings and the investor relations supplemental schedules are available on our website or through the SEC's EDGAR system. I will now turn the call over to Steve Chazen, who will provide guidance for the second half of the year.
Thank you, Jim. Occidental's second quarter 2012 production set an all-time record for the company for the second consecutive quarter. The domestic oil and gas segment produced record volumes for the seventh consecutive quarter. Second quarter domestic production of 462,000 barrel equivalents per day consisted of 322,000 barrels of liquids and 840 million cubic feet of gas per day. This was an increase of 7,000 barrel equivalents per day compared to the first quarter of 2012. About 86% of the domestic production growth of the first quarter of 2012 was in liquids, which grew from 316,000 barrels a day to 322,000. Compared to the second quarter of 2011, our domestic production grew by 9%, or 38,000 barrels a day, of which 25,000 barrels a day was liquids production growth and 79 million cubic feet a day was gas.
Our annualized return on equity for the first six months of 2012 was 15%, and our return on capital employed was 13%. For our capital program, we are raising our estimate for the total year capital program to $9.2 billion from our previous announced level of $8.3 billion. Of the increase, about $600 million is for the Al Hosn Shah gas project, with the remainder of the increase going to the rest of the oil and gas segment, primarily to non-operated properties where our forecasting ability is limited. We expect our capital spend rate to slow down modestly from the current levels during the back half of the year and stabilize in the fourth quarter. The Al Hosn gas project is approximately 49% complete and is progressing as planned. This project made up about 11% of our capital program for six months of this year.
With spending continuing at current levels, we are increasing our anticipated spending for the remainder of 2012, as I just mentioned. However, total development capital for the project is expected to be in line with previous estimates. In our domestic operations, we expect our total average rig count at current levels of about 75 to go down to an average of 70 by the end of the year. However, with the mix of rigs will shift among very different regions related to changes in gas and NGL prices. With our production growth wedged firmly in place for the back half of the year, we will focus our efforts on improving our profitability. This includes an increased oil program rather than drilling gas NGL wells. We are releasing and will continue to release underperforming rigs and crews. We will also work on improving our operating costs.
These things are well within our ability to achieve. We expect to do more with less money in the rest of the year. California, we continue to see improvement with respect to permitting issues relative to last year. We received improved field level rules and new permits for both injection wells and drilling locations. The regulatory agency continues to be responsive and committed to working through the backlog of permits. Our new Elk Hills gas plant, which went into operation early July, will positively affect our operational efficiency and production in the back half of the year. Turning production expectations in the back half of the year. Over the past year, we have generally achieved our 6 to 8,000 barrel a day quarter-over-quarter domestic production increase.
We expect that we will achieve the high end of this range increase throughout the rest of the year, which will give us an entry rate into the new year of at least 480,000 barrels a day. The increase will be spread among all of the domestic operations. Internationally, at current prices, we expect production to increase modestly for the rest of the year, depending on spending levels in Iraq. This includes the effect of a drop in production at Dolphin to about 40,000 barrels a day, starting in the third quarter, resulting from the full cost recovery of the pre-startup capital over the first five years of production, which commenced in July 2007. We expect international sales volume in the third quarter of 2012 to be similar to the second quarter. A $5 change in global oil prices would impact our daily volumes by about 3,000 barrels a day.
Financial impact of this volume change is incorporated in the product price sensitivities that Jim provided you. We expect exploration expense to be about $85 million for seismic and drilling for our exploration program in the third quarter. The chemical segment earnings are expected to be about $175 million. Weakness in export demand conditions in Europe and China, slowdown in U.S. demand, and rising U.S. natural gas costs will keep some pressure on margins. We expect our combined worldwide tax rate in the third quarter of 2012 to increase to about 42%. To summarize, we closed the quarter with our second consecutive all-time company production and the seventh consecutive record domestic oil and gas production. We increased our total domestic production by 7,000 barrels a day over the first quarter and by 38,000 barrels a day from the second quarter of 2011.
Domestically, where we are the largest onshore liquids producer in the Lower 48, our production increased by 9% in the second quarter of last year. Our total production increased by 7% in the second quarter on a year-over-year basis. We are increasing our estimate of total year capital program to $9.2 billion from our previously announced $8.3 billion. Of the increase, about $600 million is for the Al Hosn Shah gas project, with the remainder of the increase going to the rest of the oil and gas segment. Our business generated cash flow from operations of $6 billion in the first six months of 2012. We spent about $5.1 billion of our cash flow on our capital program. I think at this point, we're ready to take your questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from Leo Mariani of RBC.
Hey, guys. Just a quick question on your Permian Basin production. It looks like it was down a tiny bit in the second quarter. Just wanted to see if there's anything unusual in terms of interruptions or maybe just timing of completions there.
Bill could answer that. Bill?
Yeah. Leo, really, it's all around gas plants. We had several significant gas plant turnarounds in the quarter as well as some third-party gas plant outages. We think most of these turnarounds are behind us for the rest of the year. It was all attributable strictly to gas plants, both third-party and company operated.
Okay, great. You guys talked about going from 75 to 70 rigs and really de-emphasizing NGLs and gas and adding some crude rigs. Can you just give us a little bit more color in terms of where the rigs are going to be dropped and where you're going to add some on the crude side as you reshuffle?
Not really. We talked about reducing our count in the Williston last quarter, and that's continuing. There's some quite rigs nationally that we have that are at the bottom eighth of efficiency. We're basically releasing those rigs. We expect that with a higher concentration of better quality rigs and crews, that we'll do better in the quarter, and I expect that we'll drill as many wells in the back half of the year as we did in the first half of the year with the fewer rigs.
Okay.
The shift is we're not quite through shifting yet.
Okay, got you. In terms of acquisitions, you guys talked about doing $1 billion in the first half of the year. Are you guys going to still continue to be very active on the acquisition side in the second half? Is there any type of certain area that you guys have focused on at all in there?
It looks pretty slow here in the third quarter. We have very little, if anything, in the hopper in the third quarter. I don't expect to see much in the third quarter. There's a fair bid-ask spread, I think, right now between what we would be willing to pay and what somebody would be willing to accept. We're not in any hurry. We don't really need to do anything. You shouldn't expect to see any large-scale M&A from us.
Okay. Thanks, guys.
Your next question comes from Arjun Murti of Goldman Sachs.
Thanks. Steve, you did mention some bolt-on acreage acquisitions in the Williston. Can you just talk about where your position is now? I know you dropped some rigs, and I think you've been less enthusiastic, but where are you acreage-wise now in the Williston?
I think we're north of 300,000 acres.
the bolt-on-
I don't know exactly because they never tell me this stuff.
That's great. Do you have any update on California exploration? It's something you highlighted a couple of years ago. I know there's some small stuff and some bigger stuff, but where is that program now?
It's actually doing pretty well. We have some moderate successes in some oil, and we've got some things that are working. They're a little bit off the mainstream, off the main plan that we had as far as where they're located, and there's still some acreage to be acquired that other people have. I just don't want to go into details. I think it's doing pretty well, and we have some nice adds in the few million barrels a year, maybe 10, 12 million barrel adds.
That's great. Just lastly, I know you've started increasing the drilling, some of the Permian unconventional stuff. Any comments on how that's going?
Well, obviously the gassy NGL stuff, while it may be interesting at some point, not real exciting right now. A lot of these plays are towards New Mexico, people call them liquids rich. I call them gas rich. They're just not that exciting right now. The oil stuff is doing pretty well. Really, we're doing just fine. There's another area where there's some poor performing rigs and crews that we're going to upgrade the quality of that. My focus, as I said, in the back half of the year, I think the production ledge will be fine, maybe even more than fine in the back half of the year, because I think we've got a pretty good sized backlog. I'm really focused on improving the efficiency of the rigs and lowering the operating cost.
That's great, look forward to seeing your new CFO at some point here. Congrats on that. Thank you.
Thank you, Arjun. She'll be pleased to hear that.
Our next question comes from Doug Terreson of ISI Group.
Good morning, Steve. How are you?
Hi, Doug. How are you?
I'm doing fine. You guys are obviously a leader in the Permian, this BridgeTex Pipeline looks likely to debottleneck that area to some extent, that is, if it were to materialize. My question is whether or not you could provide us an update on your expectations and any timeline that you feel is reasonable for that situation.
Yeah, I think I'd rather defer that, let Magellan talk about it.
Okay
a pipeline company. You should understand that we could give enough crude to make any pipeline go.
Right
out of the basin. Next is maybe even more than one pipeline to go. Not only do we have our net production, but we also have the royalty production and third-party barrels. The plan in the basin is to expand our gathering system, hook it into these pipelines, and maybe make one or two lines that go, whether it goes to the Houston or Corpus and into Houston, and put as much of our stuff through there as we can. Again, we're not trying to fix the problem in the basin. We're just trying to fix our problem.
I understand. Let me ask you another question. In Abu Dhabi, can you tell us whether or not you guys are still under consideration on the onshore development phase with the SPCC? If not, do you think that you could be brought in at a later date?
No, we're actively involved.
Actively involved. Okay, great. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from Doug Leggate of Bank of America.
Thanks. Good morning, Steve.
Morning.
The gas plant in California, I guess we've been kind of waiting for this for a while. My understanding is you've also gone ahead and ordered a second gas plant. Can you help us understand?
I think we're in the study phase in a second gas plant.
Okay.
Remember, gas isn't such a hot commodity right now.
Yeah. The new gas plant having started up then, can you just walk us through how does that help? Because I seem to recall the capacity was fairly significant, but what should we anticipate in terms of a volume response as a result of that?
I don't know yet. When we ordered the plant, we thought we would drill more gas wells, and obviously, we're a little ways away from that yet. You'll get, I think, maybe three effects. The most significant one is an increase in reliability. There's a significant loss every quarter due to something that's blamed on some third party. We'll have to take the blame ourselves now, I guess, instead of blaming it on somebody else. Second, there's a much deeper cut, and so there'll be more NGLs, for whatever they're worth, coming out of the plant. Finally, there's clearly more capacity. I'd like to defer the discussion about the capacity response from the rest of the field until we get at least a quarter of actual results rather than just a few weeks.
Got it. My follow-up, if I may, is also on California. A few, I guess a bunch of quarters ago, you kind of laid out the running room you had there, but the permitting seems to have gotten an awful lot better. I guess what I'm curious on is what is it going to take for you to get after what you would acknowledge are some of the highest IRR opportunities in the portfolio? It seems that with your guidance on rigs-
Yeah
that you're not planning to do that anytime soon.
I'm waiting for them to reduce their cost per well.
What is it currently?
It's simply they can make changes, sizable step changes in their cost per well. My experience over the last however long is giving them more money does not cause that. A little diet for a little while will have significant reductions in their cost per well. I'm talking not 10%, not 20%, but a third. Once they get to the point where their well costs are in line with what they ought to achieve, then we'll pick up the pace. If I can reduce the cost, I'll get more wells for the same money. That's really what I'm after. I'm not after volume per se. I'm actually after money. Right now, they can do a lot better, and they will, but the only way to do it is to ensure that they feel pressed.
Forgive me, Steve. You dominate the play. How do you benchmark what's achievable when you're, I guess, competing with yourself?
Competing with myself. I know we can tell what's achievable. We've experimented, and we know. It's not a theoretical discussion. We changed some things, and we had step changes in it, and this is just the beginning. They can do better.
All right. I'll leave it there. Thanks, Steve.
Thanks.
Our next question comes from Jason Gammel of Macquarie.
Thank you. Steve, I wanted to ask you, first of all, about your transportation capacity out of the Permian Basin. Really, my question is really more around what we have seen as a building differential between Cushing and Midland. With the pipeline that you acquired a few years back, you should have the ability to avoid any differentials there on at least some volumes. I wanted to see how much you are actually covered on transportation there. My second question is really more housekeeping on the acquisitions. Should we look at the $1 billion of acquisitions year to date as incremental to the new CapEx guidance that you have given? Is there any associated production figure with those acquisitions for the second quarter and then for the rest of the year?
Starting with the Midland. There was a small problem that somebody had in Midland early, sometime this quarter, last quarter, that's really gone away. I think some of this difference is pretty much gone. You don't really see that anymore. Somebody had a problem there. I can't remember who. I've included in the capital additional for the back half of the year, the additional spending on the acquisitions that came in the first half. There was no production effect from the acquisitions in the second quarter because most of them were done late in the quarter. There might be 1,000 or 2,000 barrels a day, all liquids, in the third quarter.
Okay. Just to follow up on the differential again, Steve, it may have been a relatively temporary issue in the 2-2, but does it indicate that you're starting to experience pretty tight infrastructure in the Permian in general? It could be another issue that crops up periodically over time.
Yeah. If you just take a long view, the pipeline system was built for a very large amount of oil years ago and was allowed to degrade because everybody thought it was going to deplete away. The ownership of the pipelines changed from integrated producers to, generally speaking, cash flow-driven organizations who get paid on increased distributions rather than agents. What's happened is that the system is not in particularly great shape, which is why we bought the pipeline systems. We're going to invest some money to improve our results in that. The system is tight right now, and it does not take much to create a modest disruption. We're in better shape than most people because we control our own destiny largely.
I think this is something, not just in the Permian, but everywhere, where everybody assumed the United States was going out of business in the oil industry. Even if you don't buy some of the more ridiculous things that people have put out as far as growth, a modest amount of growth will tax the system nationwide because the infrastructure is basically designed currently as a cash cow rather than something that you need to keep up. Does that answer your question?
Yeah, that's helpful. Thank you, Steve.
Thanks.
Our next question comes from Matt Portillo of Tudor, Pickering, Holt.
Morning, guys. Two quick questions from me.
Morning.
Just on the acquisition side for the second quarter, could you give us an idea of the $2.7 billion, what approximately was spent on acquisitions? Just a quick second question here. In relation to Colombia, obviously, you guys had a nice uptick back to kind of normalized volumes. There seems to have been a continued frequency of pipeline-
I think our capital, the acquisition money in the second quarter was like $700 million.
Yeah.
It was $1 billion for the first half of the year. Capital was $2.7 billion, the acquisition was, I think, $700 million or so.
Okay, great. That's very helpful.
Yeah. It's $1 billion for the first six months in acquisitions. I got lost in the rest of the question, so if you'd repeat it.
Sure. Just in terms of Colombia, you obviously had a nice uptick in production in the second quarter, I think as Caño Limón pipeline kind of normalized. Are you guys seeing similar levels of production heading into the third quarter? Are there any improvements that you're seeing on the security side down in Colombia?
Well, we'll let Bill answer that.
Yeah, Matt. So far in the third quarter, we've had about 1,000 barrels a day outage is all. We obviously have had more insurgent activity in the third quarter so far. Who knows what it's going to be like for the rest of the quarter, but so far there has not been a material effect on production.
It's capable of producing 32,000, 33,000. There was some loss even in the second quarter. All he's really saying is it's sort of like the second quarter.
Yeah.
Thanks, guys, appreciate it.
Our next question comes from Eliot Javanmardi of Capital One Southcoast.
Good morning, guys.
Morning.
Just a quick question for you. Do you still see the Williston Basin as a potential longer-term resource play for the company? The reason I ask that is, you obviously get great returns in California and the Permian plays. I'm just trying to understand, what kind of scenario would you actually be willing to put your dollars at work in the Williston? I think you've addressed some of it potentially on a well cost front, what scenario would you envision that, even if it is the number 3 play you would invest in, for example, in the U.S., how would you assess that situation as to when you feel good about putting dollars to work there?
Definitely number 3. It's really a cost issue. I think that the service companies are getting rich as pigs there, I think until the costs come down and the efficiency improves, we'll continue to focus on the best wells and the most efficient wells and improving our learning curve. We're still in a learning curve phase, there's that, there's a differential issue, which I think could be fixed over time, I'm in no hurry to put capital there. We still continue to put capital there, not to the level that we were. We're still making 16,000, 17,000 a day there. It's clearly assets for the future rather than a big driver for today.
Excellent. Thank you for the color.
Sure.
Our next question comes from Edward Westlake of Credit Suisse.
Hey, good morning.
Morning.
Just a question. You mentioned last quarter when you were looking at the increase in California rig counts, sort of five rigs every six months, that some were going into steam flood as well as, I guess, the shale in inverted commas.
Right.
Can you give us an update in terms of how many rigs you're in steam flood versus other opportunities?
I actually don't know. Three? I think we have three rigs in the steam floods right now.
Right. We'll boost that as the year progresses.
Still incremental rigs going in against your guidance then into the.
The shale.
That's okay.
Shale and into the steam floods.
Yeah. Just on, this is more of a longer-term question, obviously, in the central part of San Joaquin Valley, financial geologist that I am, you have a potentially thicker part of the shale, it's deep and the rock quality may not be as good. Is there any technology that you think could work there to turn that into sort of a repeatable shale play?
Well, maybe someday, right now, we try to do easy stuff before hard stuff. We're focused on what's easy right now. What's easiest right now is to drill low cost shale wells in easy places. We've monkeyed with what you just said, and I think we're still in the early phases of thinking about that.
Is it fair to say that you're putting some R&D dollars into that type of monkeying around?
Yes. Yes, we do.
Right. Okay. Thanks very much.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Sven Del Pozzo of IHS Herold.
Yeah, good afternoon.
Hi. Morning here.
How you doing? Good morning. Your prospective savings on completion costs in California for your unconventional wells, what kind of timeframe do you think we'll have?
Next year.
We'll start to see some CapEx?
It's actually happening now. It's happening now.
Okay.
You'll see it'll be clear as the year progresses.
Okay. Same type of question regarding CapEx for the midstream. When do you think we'll start to see the CapEx deployment in the midstream slow down?
Well, a lot of that is Al Hosn gas plant. The domestic capital is probably not going to slow down for a little while till I get the pipeline system up and running better. The Al Hosn stuff, that part of it should start to roll off into the fourth and first quarters. The drilling portion, the part that's charged, goes to E&P, will pick up that slack and more into the fourth and first quarter next year. I wouldn't be too confused about where this Midstream capital is going. A fair amount of it, except for a little bit right now, is going into the Elk Hills project.
Okay. Your production growth sequentially from the first quarter to the second quarter in the Mid-Continent region, which also includes the Bakken. If it's not the Bakken where the production growth is coming from on the oil side, what regions or-
It is from there.
Yeah.
It is from there.
Oh, it is? Okay.
The bulk of it is from there. We started, I remember, at 3,000 or 4,000 a day early last year, and we're 17 running now. Somewhere in there, it's there. There's improvement in South Texas and the rest of the Rockies. Fundamentally, that segment, the large increases are Bakken production.
Okay. Spike in Bahraini gas production. Could you just help me to understand what's going on there?
Sandy can probably answer that.
Yes. The gas production is paid for on a capacity basis, and we've recently installed a lot of equipment that increases the capacity to what the kingdom thinks they'll need over the next few years.
Is there any way to quantify the profitability change associated with this increase in gas production?
Pretty modest. The profits there will be made off the oil production, and the gas serves as a sort of a base to give us a base return, I think, is the way to think about that project. The gas, since it's sort of a captive gas market, is basically what pays for the thing. The upside, the higher returns, will come from improved oil prices.
Okay.
Oil production.
Okay. Lastly, view on chemicals. Just your announcement, sometime after 2015, of 1.1 billion pound ethylene cracker. I don't know if it's an expansion or a brand new plant.
No. I think the announcement is that we're studying it.
Okay.
We're not committed to the cracker. We are going to build a fractionator, but we're not committed to a cracker.
Okay. For working capital component of your cash flow in the first six months of the year, if you'd like to email it to me later, that's fine. If you have it right there, that's great.
Chris can deal with that. I don't think you'll find it a big deal.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Katherine Minyard of J.P. Morgan.
Hi, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my question.
Hi.
Just looking at 2Q 2012 production for the U.S., how much of that production came from wells that were brought online since the beginning of the year?
It's probably a more complicated question than you probably thought. You'd have to go basin by basin. We don't know. Why don't you contact Chris, and maybe we can reconstruct that over the next Yeah, we don't have it with us.
Okay. All right. When you talk about cost reduction of about a third in your drilling, are you looking at achieving-
California, we talked about.
Right. Are you looking at achieving that? Is it lower drill times? Is it different completion techniques? What would be the main factors driving the bulk of that type of reduction?
Bill can answer that, because he's responsible.
Katherine, it's really both, okay? On the drilling side, it's a lot of little things that add up to cost reductions. On the completion side, it's primarily reductions in pressure pumping costs.
Okay. All right, great. Thanks a lot, gentlemen.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from Alexander Morris of Raymond James.
Yeah, hey, thanks for taking my question. Following up on the Colombia insurgency question from earlier, could you give an update maybe on Libya and whether production is back at pre-war levels there? I guess if not, what needs to happen to get there?
Sandy can answer that.
Yes, we're just about at pre-war levels right now. We're just putting new teams into the country to work on new projects. We will be doing seismic work later this year. We're pretty much back to normal in Libya.
Thanks.
Your next question comes from John Herrlin of Societe Generale.
Yeah. Hi, Steve.
Hi.
Are you seeing any discounts to price book by the services companies in the Permian? Some of your peers have been mentioning that. Are you seeing that at all?
Bill can answer that.
Yeah. John? Yeah, we're seeing some modest price reduction off of the price book.
What's that, 10% or less?
It's 7%-10%.
Okay.
Yeah. We tend to contract longer term than somebody else who might go to monthly contracts.
Okay.
Yeah. We're not quite as sensitive to somebody who might be drilling six wells or something.
Okay. That's fine, Steve. With the Elk Hills plant, is there just a commissioning startup phase before you get it fully on?
It's gone through that.
Okay.
Like all plants that are designed by engineers, they never seem to work just exactly right the first day. We've actually gone through that because we started the process more than a month ago. Right now, I think we're okay.
Okay. I probably missed this because I got on late. What was your cash position at quarter's end?
A little over $4 billion.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. I will now turn the floor back over to Mr. Stavros for any closing remarks.
Thanks very much for joining us today. If you have further questions on the conference call or earnings release today, please call us in New York. Thanks very much.
Thank you. This does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.