Dan O. Dinges
Analyst · Goldman Sachs
Thank you, Shea. I appreciate it. And good morning, and thank you for joining us for this call. A couple of members with me on the management team, Scott Schroeder, CFO; Jeff Hutton, our VP of Marketing; Steve Lindeman, VP of Engineering and Technology; Matt Reid, our VP of Regional -- and Regional Manager; and Todd Liebl, our VP of Land and Business Development. As you're aware, the standard forward-looking statements included in the press release do apply to my comments today. At this time, we have several things to cover and expand on the press releases that were issued last night. I'll cover the first quarter financial results, recent successes from our drill bit effort, followed by a discussion of our operations. Now before I do go into the details of these topics, I'll start with a brief highlight of last night's release. Cabot grew production 58% over the comparable quarter last year, including a 55% growth in natural gas plus an impressive 138% growth in liquids. The growth figures include only a few days of the new production we recently brought online in the Marcellus coming from a 7-mile step-out to the east of our existing production. The wells have free flowed 70 million to 80 million-plus cubic foot per day since being turned in line. Also of note are increasing liquids production. It's continuing in both Oklahoma and Texas. Plus, we'll cover briefly the initial down-spacing success we had in our Buckhorn area of the Eagle Ford. And finally, we're excited to announce our exposure to the Utica liquids window of about 50,000 net acres. This potential will be tested with a well to spud this summer. Let's move to financial results, and last night the company reported clean earnings of approximately $29 million driven by our significant production increase that did more than offset the weak natural gas prices. On the production side, in terms of the significant uptick in production, the Marcellus, Eagle Ford, and to a little bit lesser extent, the Marmaton were the driving forces. One item to note is that the 2011 first quarter results include 2.5 Bcf of Rocky Mountain production, which we sold last year. The equivalent pro forma growth would be about 70% regardless that the quarter was a record breaker production-wise. The first quarter production landed at the midpoint of guidance even with the shutdown of the Lathrop Compressor Station during the last days of the quarter. This event will not change our full year production guidance of 35% to 50% growth, which we reaffirmed last night. Our net exit rate for natural gas for the quarter was approximately 623 million cubic foot per day, while oil was 5,870 barrels per day. With the completion successes in April, some of which are provided in the operations release, April's net production has averaged 655 million cubic foot per day for gas and 6,500 barrels of oil per day, which provide the basis for modeling the second quarter. For cost guidance, we updated other taxes to fully reflect the new impact fee in Pennsylvania. Additionally, we updated exploration expense and discussed pension expense. Let's talk about our plans a little bit. The Cabot operation plan remains basically unchanged for 2012. We continue to focus our capital allocation towards our drilling in the Marcellus, and the remainder of our capital dollars are being allocated in the oil window of the Eagle Ford and into the Marmaton. Currently, we have 7 rigs operating in our plays between Pennsylvania, Texas and Oklahoma. We remain committed to balancing these efforts with our anticipated cash flow. However, as you might be aware of the forward curve lower than our February forecast, our plan does result in slightly more utilization of the revolver this year. We have been asked the question a number of times, will we slow down or change our investment program? Really, my answer is this, that with the strength of the balance sheet and our objective to secure all our acreage in the best -- maybe the only return gas play in the country, and with the continued growth of our liquids production in Texas and Oklahoma, we plan to keep our operation program as budgeted. And regarding hedging, the company did not add any hedges since our February call. Our existing hedges are on the website and represent 39% of midpoint guidance. We also have 7 contracts in 2013, 5 gas and 2 oil. We continue to look at potential for hedging a portion of our oil production as we increase that production strength, but we do not anticipate hedging gas at these levels. Now let's move specifically into the operation area in the Marcellus. Our results in Susquehanna County continue to excel. Since our last call, we have achieved a new production record of 678 million cubic foot growth per day, which is over 70 million cubic foot per day greater than our last call. A review of our production history indicates we have produced over 250 Bcf from our Susquehanna area since first production 39 months ago. This translates into close to or over $1 billion in revenue and approximately $125 million paid in royalty. This is substantial evidence of the positive impact we're having on the local community up there and certainly the state of Pennsylvania. Cabot continues to operate 5 rigs in Susquehanna with our plan to reduce this count during the second half of the year by a couple of rigs. In operations release last night, we highlighted a couple of key data points. Specifically of note was one 2-well pad site with a total of 40 stages completed, which yielded a combined 30-day average of 40 million cubic foot per day, a couple of pretty good wells. These 2 wells were slightly longer laterals than our average well and illustrated the efficiencies gained with longer laterals. A second key data point, and I think most importantly, is our 5-well pad site on the east portion of our acreage. This is approximately 7 miles from current production. These 5 wells we completed a total of 92 stages, as highlighted last night. And it is worth repeating, these 5 wells have averaged about 78 million cubic foot per day over the last 20 days. The successful completion of these wells indicates our eastern acreage should be equally as productive as the central portion of our area, and certainly without question, de-risk another substantial portion of our acreage. Another initiative underway in the Marcellus is our pilot program to determine the optimal well spacing and also to look at the Upper Marcellus. We recently completed 2 lateral wells spaced 500 feet and located between 2 existing wells that had a combined cumulative production of over 10 Bcf from the Lower Marcellus. One of the 500-foot space laterals was landed in the upper Marcellus, and the other was landed in the lower Marcellus. Both of these wells have been completed and are cleaning up very nicely. As these results come more available, we will share those results with you when we have those. Currently, we have 238 stages completing, cleaning up or waiting to turn in line and an additional 333 stages waiting to be completed in the Marcellus. Our new completion crew continues to make progress with its efficiency. For March, this crew completed 107 stages, a new high for Cabot. Because of the efficiencies gained and the macro outlook for natural gas, we are no longer planning to bring a second crew in for 2012. In regard to our infrastructure up there, our plans continue on course at a consistent and steady pace. During the first quarter, we reached a significant milestone with the start-up of the Zick [ph] compressor station. Although we are free-flowing and currently only utilizing the dehydration and measurement facilities, the station is operational. The compressors will be commissioned during June. Other stations, new pipelines, additional connections and upgrades to its existing facilities are continuing as planned. And we have indicated before, we intend to exit 2012 with approximately 1.5 Bcf takeaway capacity. Also of note, I might mention that the Lathrop station is back at 100% with all 7 compressor units operating. In regard to the pricing up there in the Marcellus, let me give you a quick update. Everyone is aware of the weak commodity prices the industry is experiencing. In addition, we, as well as other Marcellus producers, have experienced some discounting to the historic Appalachia Surplus and Pricing Index. However, with the flexibility of our Springville line to Transco and the Laser system to Millennium, our pricing is flat to minus $0.03 to $0.05 below the Henry Hub. We expect that trend to continue in that range. Now let's move to South Texas, into the oil window of the Eagle Ford and our Buckhorn area. The company has drilled a total of 30 wells. Each well is 100% working interest well located in Frio, La Salle and/or Atascosa County. 29 of these wells are oil production with one well waiting on completion and one well drilling. As we highlighted last night, our down-spacing test results in the Eagle Ford has indicated success based on the early test data coming from the 2 wells. These 2 wells were drilled with approximately 5,900-foot laterals at a spacing of 400 feet between the wells, which translates into approximately 55 acres per well. The test rates of each well had approximately 790 barrels of oil per day over 24-hour period are certainly encouraging. We plan to continue to monitor these wells with plans for additional down-spacing test later this year. Should be these results be implemented in our total development plan, we would have anywhere between 550 to 700 total potential locations just in Buckhorn. Gross production from both Buckhorn and our Presidio [ph] area, which is a joint venture area with EOG, is approximately 9,800 barrels per day, with our net production from the Eagle Ford at 5,700 barrels per day. Cabot intends to drill or participate in 20 to 25 net Eagle Ford wells in 2012. Now a brief statement in our Marmaton effort, which has a couple of pretty nice wells up there. Cabot has 6 operated wells on production with 2 wells completing and one well drilling. The latest 2 operated wells have provided very positive data points to continue to assess this play. The results were in last night's release. The most prolific well has a cumulative production of 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent in the first 50 days of production. That's about 87% oil. We will continue to drill with one operated rig in the area at this time and probably for the remainder of '12. In the Marmaton, our effort continues to identify the more highly fractured areas of the play with slightly over 69,000 net acres. That's our perspective for the Marmaton. We certainly have a lot of running room up there. Shea, with that, I'll be more than happy to take any questions.