Earnings Labs

Battalion Oil Corporation (BATL)

Q1 2017 Earnings Call· Thu, May 4, 2017

$3.73

+0.73%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to Halcón Resources First Quarter 2017 Earnings Conference Call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session with instructions following at that time. And as a reminder, this conference is being recorded. And now I'll turn the conference over to your host, Mark Mize, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please begin. Mark J. Mize - Halcón Resources Corp.: Okay. Good morning. This conference call contains forward-looking statements. For a detailed description of our disclaimer see our earnings release issued yesterday and posted on our website. We've also updated our investor presentation for the first quarter and certain other items and you can access that presentation on our website also. I'm going to begin the call with comments on our financial performance during the first quarter, as well as some thoughts on our updated 2017 guidance. I'm then going to turn the call over to Jon Wright, SVP of Operations, who's going to make some comments about operations. and then Floyd will finish the call with a few comments. Production for the first quarter averaged 38,478 barrels of oil equivalent per day, which exceeded the high end of our guidance range of 36,000 Boe to 37,000 Boe a day. The strong first quarter production was driven by outperformance of several wells put on line in late 2016, on Fort Berthold, as well as improved production from existing PDP wells on our recent Pecos County acquisition. Our realized first quarter oil differential Our realized first quarter oil differential of 90% of NYMEX was slightly better than the 89% we saw in the fourth quarter, and our first quarter natural gas differential came in at 77% of NYMEX and the NGL differential for the first…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our first question is from Will Green of Stephens. Your line is open.

Will O. Green - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst

Good morning, guys. I wanted to start on the workovers in the Bakken. LOE jumped a little bit this quarter. You did mention that there were some higher workover costs. Is that sort of a transitory issue, where you just – a bunch of stuff got lumped in this quarter and we start to see that LOE kind of normalize going forward? Or any kind of color there would be great. Jon C. Wright - Halcón Resources Corp.: Yeah, this is Jon. Thanks for the question, Will. Regarding LOE workovers in the Bakken, we had a number of workovers, rigs operating in the Bakken, 11 rigs to be exact. Through some of our production initiatives there, we've decreased the number of rigs to six. So we'll see a significant decrease in our workover expenses as we move into 2017.

Will O. Green - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst

Great. And then the other thing I wanted to ask about is, in talking to investors and other operators, you hear rumblings about concern about completion crews getting tied out in the Permian Basin. I figured I would ask you guys, since you guys have recently been in the market, kind of looking to get these next set of wells fracked. As you guys are getting ramped, how has availability been? How have pricing talks been? Just any kind of additional color around that. Is that – is the Basin extremely tight on completion crews? Or do you feel pretty comfortable about where you guys stand in terms of getting them? Jon C. Wright - Halcón Resources Corp.: Will, as we mentioned, we recently contracted our frac fleet, which will begin operations in mid to early June. The market is tight. We were able to get the CRMWD well fracked with a spot fleet. So, the opportunity is there. A lot of it is about relationships as well. The frac fleet we'll be utilizing in the Permian will be the same, or from the same company as our fleet in the Bakken, so relationships matter here.

Will O. Green - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst

Great. Well that's all I had, guys. Thanks for the color.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from (14:45). Your line is open.

Unknown Speaker

Analyst

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my call. This is actually Kevin (14:51) calling in for (14:53). Just wanted to see – I know it's early days in Pecos and congrats on the well performance out there recently. I just wanted to see what your appetite, though is for additional bolt-on acreage and kind of how your thought process is around that? Floyd C. Wilson - Halcón Resources Corp.: Yeah, our appetite is good for that. It's pretty tight, as you know, out there. There's always a few things that you can add and we've added a few acres here and there. We have a very strong eye towards forming 10,000-foot, drilling-ins that will accommodate 10,000 foot wells. So that relegates as to acquiring acreage that are at least that large and near other operations for adding to acreage that allows us to do 10,000 foot laterals on our existing acreage. So yeah, we're looking in both of our areas right now and having some success here and there.

Unknown Speaker

Analyst

Thanks, that's helpful. And just to that context, in terms of those 10,000 foot laterals, what percentage of your inventory is perspective of that similar kind of completion design? Floyd C. Wilson - Halcón Resources Corp.: Almost all of it.

Unknown Speaker

Analyst

Okay. Floyd C. Wilson - Halcón Resources Corp.: I mean we'll drill a few 5,000-foot wells here and there just because of acreage exploration and acreage, sort of stranded acreage in a good spot (16:23). But I don't think we have more than a couple of those planned this year.

Unknown Speaker

Analyst

Okay. Understood. And I assume that's – I read that your Ward County acreage is kind of similar most of this is 10,000 foot laterals. Floyd C. Wilson - Halcón Resources Corp.: Yeah, maybe as I reported before, but maybe not on the quarterly call. We hired a rig to go out there and drill a vertical well. We call it a pilot hole or a strat test. The results were so great, we just used that same rig, which was a very underpowered rig, to drill a long lateral, and we drilled a short lateral just to get the ball rolling out there, a 5,500-foot lateral. Since then, we've released that rig and we have only rigs that are confident to drill long lateral wells.

Unknown Speaker

Analyst

Okay. Thanks. That's helpful. And my last question is just on that slight uptick in spend on seismic and infrastructure. Just wanted to get more color on that and wanted to see if that might if that's kind of done for the year or there's some additional spend needed potentially in the future? Floyd C. Wilson - Halcón Resources Corp.: Well when you have geophysicists shopping, it's like a kid going to a candy store. So, there's always some new piece of seismic or some relook at some existing seismic that they want to do. I think what we have projected for seismic for the rest of this year is about firm. There could be a small reduction or a small increase. The timing of all that is such that we may have put the entire load on this year, but the way those contracts work, you don't really pay for them until they perform the work.

Unknown Speaker

Analyst

Okay. Got it. Thanks so much for your help.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from the line of Ron Mills of Johnson Rice. Your line is open. Ronald E. Mills - Johnson Rice & Co. LLC: Good morning. Jon, maybe for you on – you already touched on Pecos County. I know part of the absolute increase is from 10,000 foot laterals but on a per foot basis they increased about 50% versus the prior slide deck. What were some of the primary drivers in terms of those production enhancements to generate that kind of improvement in EURs per foot in Pecos? Jon C. Wright - Halcón Resources Corp.: Hey, Ron. Just to clarify on the EURs. Those are on a Boe per foot basis. They have been (19:06). Ronald E. Mills - Johnson Rice & Co. LLC: Got you. Jon C. Wright - Halcón Resources Corp.: So, when you talk about the production optimization piece, we've seen increases of 20% to 60% in the EURs on those specific PDP wells we've increased on the production on. But that really has translated to increasing our EUR perspective for the entire property with those PDP increases, as well as looking at our offset operators. So we feel like those EURs are grounded in some solid data. Floyd C. Wilson - Halcón Resources Corp.: Ron, in addition to that, additionally to that we reported or we indicated that when we put out the initial estimates we were using our acquisition economics and our acquisition view of things. And it was widely commented on that our – those acquisition economics were considerably lower than all of the peers nearby. And this is just the natural movement towards moving from the acquisition mode, which you try to make a good deal on, and to the reality of what you expect to make. Ronald E.…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question is from David Epstein of Cowan. Your line is open. David Epstein - Cowen & Co. LLC: Hi, folks. What would be a driver of you guys doing something on the high-intensity Tier 1 Williams wells which I think you were showing for the first time? And then also under what conditions would you accelerate FBIR beyond what you're doing already? Thanks. Floyd C. Wilson - Halcón Resources Corp.: The strategic nature of all that is that everything's HBP'd up there and we don't have to do anything that doesn't make good sense. And right now after our recent entry into the Delaware Basin it makes more sense to spend more time there. As Jon mentioned, we've already done quite a few of these higher prop-loaded wells up in the Williston Basin and we've found that in certain areas it's a very dramatic difference, certain zones, Bakken versus Three Forks and other areas they are just not quite so dramatic. The wells are just so darn good it doesn't seem to make them better. So that's the answer. Jon's going to do the majority of the wells up there this year with higher prop-loading. Williams County, a good part of Williams County is great. Again it's HBP'd. We tend to want to go up and do pads at a time not just a well. And we have a nice five-well pad ready to go but we've got some fill-in work down in on Fort Berthold to finalize a couple of pads. And so we're doing that right now. The trend towards the prop-loading is in almost every play everywhere in the United States, and it seems to be bearing fruit on a statistically regular basis for the industry. David Epstein - Cowen & Co. LLC: Thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Floyd Wilson for any closing remarks. Floyd C. Wilson - Halcón Resources Corp.: Well, the only remarks would be thanks for calling in, and call us if you think of something that we didn't cover. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes the program. You may now disconnect. Have a wonderful day.