Earnings Labs

Devon Energy Corporation (DVN)

Q4 2007 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 6, 2008

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to Devon Energy's fourth quarter and year end 2007 Earnings Call. (Operator Instructions). At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Vince White, Vice President of Communications and Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Vince White

President

Good morning, everyone and thank you operator for that promotion. Welcome to Devon's year end 2007 conference call and webcast. I am going to start the call with the few preliminary items and then our Chairman and CEO, Larry Nichols will give a high level overview of 2007 as well as updates on a couple of strategic initiatives. Following Larry's remarks, our Senior Vice President of Exploration and Production, Steve Hadden will cover our operating highlights. And then finally our President, John Richels will finish up with the review of the year's financial results as well as our outlook for 2008. We will conclude the call in about an hour. So if you don't get your question answered, please feel free to contact us after the call for follow-up. A replay of this call will be available later today through a link on our homepage and we will also be distributing a new issue of Devon Direct as well as posting it to the Devon website. Also today we will follow Form 8-K as we do each time this year which will provide the forecast for the year ahead. This 8-K includes forecast for 2008 production by product and geographic region, expense estimates and our expected differentials to benchmark oil and gas prices for the year. The forecast in today's 8-K treat our remaining operations in Africa as discontinued operations. However, in addition to the forecast for our continuing operations, we are providing a summary forecast applicable to the divestiture properties. This will enable those of you that maintain models on Devon to include or exclude West Africa as you choose. As you may remember our decision to sell last year our African operations triggered the accounting rules for discontinued operations. Under those rules the revenue and expenses for the…

Larry Nichols

CEO

Thanks, Vince, and good morning, everyone. Now for the fun. The earnings release that we released this morning really shows that Devon had its best year ever in our 20-year history as a public company. 2007 was a great year. We grew oil and gas production 12% over 2006, up to 224 million Boe. We reported record net earnings of $3.6 billion. We reported record earnings per share of $8 per share. Cash flow before balance sheet changes climbed 21%, also reached an all-time high $7.3 billion. With cash flow from operations we funded $5.4 billion in exploration and development capital. In addition we repurchased $326 million of common stock and we repaid $567 million of maturing debt during the year. In laying the foundation for the future we drilled over 2400 wells with a 98% success rate growing crude reserves to a record $2.5 billion of equivalent barrels. Our finding and development costs came in lower than our forecast and did not include any reserves from our deepwater Gulf projects. We began operations on three of our significant projects that we talked about in 2006 and 2007, the deepwater Merganser field in the Gulf of Mexico, the Polvo offshore field in Brazil and the Jackfish oil sands project in Canada. In the Barnett Shale, we achieved a 33% production growth and drill-bit reserve additions of more than three times the year's production, very good performance in the Barnett Shale. In Canada, we increased annual oil production from Lloydminster by 40% to 33,500 barrels per day and added 22 million barrels with the drill-bit. Not to be out done our marketing and mid-stream operations also delivered record results, contributing more than $0.5 billion of operating profit for the year. And we finished the year in a very strong financial position…

Steve Hadden

Management

Thanks, Larry, and good morning to everyone. As Larry mentioned from an operations perspective, 2007 was an outstanding year. We delivered 12% production growth in pushed proved reserves to a record 2.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent. This was the result of highly successful capital program including the drilling of 2440 wells with a 98% overall success rate. Nearly 94% of those wells were in low-risk development projects which continue to provide a solid reliable platform from which to grow. At the end of December we had a 122 rigs running companywide with 87 rigs drilling Devon operated well. And we are drilling at a similar pace today. 2007 capital expenditures for exploration and development develop projects came in at $5.4 billion including $1.6 billion in the fourth quarter. To reach the $5.8 billion of drill-bit capital that Larry referred to, you would add roughly $400 million of capitalized G&A and interest to the E&P total. Moving now to our fourth quarter operating highlights starting with the Barnett Shale field in North Texas, we are currently drilling 32 Devon operated rigs including 14 in the core and 18 outside the core. 20 of these operated rigs are the newer high efficiency models. Production growth for the field continued to exceed our expectations in the fourth quarter. You may recall that last August we increased our 2007 exit rate target for the Barnett to 875 million cubic feet per day about 10% above the 800 million cubic feet per day target we set at the beginning of the year. During the fourth quarter we blew through that target as well and we are producing around 950 million cubic feet per day on December 31st. In fact, our net Barnett production average doubled 930 million cubic feet of gas equivalent per day…

John Richels

President

Thank you, Steve and good morning, everyone. This morning I will take you through a brief review of the key events and drivers that shaped our 2007 financial results and our outlook for 2008. As Vince mentioned, we have reclassified the assets, liabilities and results of operations in Africa as discontinued operations for all accounting periods presented. So I’ll focus my comments only on our continuing operations, which exclude the results attributable to West Africa. Let's begin with our production. For 2007 our full year production was 224 million barrels of oil equivalent or approximately 614,000 Boe's per day. Compared to last year you'll find that company-wide production increased by 65,000 Boe per day or nearly 12%. Our US onshore and international operating segments drove this year-over-year growth. We grew production from US onshore by nearly 40,000 barrels per day or 13%. Increased drilling activity in the Barnett Shale coupled with overall reservoir outperformance in the Barnett were the biggest drivers of our US onshore growth. We also nearly doubled production in the international sector to 54,000 barrels per day in 2007 driven by the performance of the ACG field in Azerbaijan and initial production from our Polvo field in Brazil. For the fourth quarter of 2007 production came in at 58.1 million equivalent barrels or 632,000 barrels per day. This represented a 10% increase in fourth quarter production over last year and marks the seventh consecutive quarter of production growth. In addition, we exceeded the fourth quarter guidance provided in our third quarter conference call, by just over a million barrels. This was driven by several of our core properties in North America, delivering better than expected results, and the lack of any significant hurricane downtime in the Gulf of Mexico. Looking ahead to 2008, we anticipate continued, strong…

Vince White

President

Thank you John. Our operator, we're ready to take the first question.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions). Our first question will come from the line of Dave Kistler with Simmons & Company. Please proceed. Dave Kistler - Simmons & Company: Good morning.

Larry Nichols

CEO

Good morning. Dave Kistler - Simmons & Company: With respect to the Barnett, both you and the industry are having very prolific production growth there. It seems like kind of across the board people have a very deep inventory there, obliviously you guys have one of the deepest. Do you foresee any potential if the structure constraints in the near future, whether it would be transportation gathering, processing, and, if so, can we talk a little bit about your development plans for handling that?

Darryl Smette

Analyst · Simmons & Company

Yeah, Dave, this is Darryl Smette. Obliviously you are correct that Devon and number of the other participants in the Barnett Shale are having success and that has put some strain on infrastructure not only gathering systems but export systems in processing plants. Devon has in place, from transportation enough processing capacities assisting plants and our own gathering systems so we can handle all of the production that Devon for seasoning produce into the future. So while we do see something constraints in the area, we think that we have positioned ourselves not only to produce the volumes but they will have a gathered, processed and transported the variety markets throughout the United States. Dave Kistler - Simmons & Company: Great. Kind of building off that a little bit. Kind of blocking in all of those plans. Do you guys or have you projected what you estimate to be kind of peak Barnett production for you guys or a goal for peak production?

Steve Hadden

Management

Yeah, this is Steve Hadden, Dave. You saw that we talked earlier that we set a target or a stopping off point of a Bcf a day by the end of 2009, not too long ago, maybe a year or so ago and we belong to that pretty quickly. Our goal is to continue to drive the efficiency with the drilling and completions that we are seeing across the business and continue to work to have those volumes grow. We are seeing better well performance as I mentioned in the earlier comments, better well performance year-over-year as we've been progressing. We've also had success with our infill drilling program that continues to add to our inventory, and this inventory of drilling is very, very deep for us and will go on for a very long time. So as we look out for the foreseeable future for the Barnett Shale for Devon, we expect growth continue to occur and these efficiencies to continue to deliver good growth. So, our goal for say is not any one stopping off point because we'll continue to grow well beyond the Bcf a day of net once we hit that in the second quarter and that will continue for years. Dave Kistler - Simmons & Company: Great. Thank you for that clarification. If I can just ask one more question. When you kind of look at the deepwater, what do you see is the chief technological challenges as you progress with getting those prospects and projects commercialized. And I guess as a part of that discussion if you could talk about where you are with respect to securing FPSO for Cascade and realizing you are not the operator but would love to get the color on that?

Steve Hadden

Management

Yeah. Relative to the Cascade we're continuing to move forward with that development and specifically to the FPSO for Cascade, it's already been secured. The contract has been left. The vessel is actually in Singapore being retrofitted as we speak. And so we're well on our way and right on our path for first production in 2010. And we'll drill the two wells, the two producing wells, last half of this year and then into 2009 to get the FPSO out there, have the subset work done in 2009 and in the early 2010 and then be ready for the first production there. As far as the overall challenges to getting to a sanctioning decision in commercialization, obviously these things are technically challenging and relatively complex as you go through both the size and the magnitude of what these things could be. And we're working through those things with integrated project teams, with our partners. The challenges include everything from working through all the options for drilling and completing the wells most efficiently and effectively for the reservoir to working on the configuration for the producing facilities that will deliver the best economics and long-term performance for that reservoir as we continue to characterize it with the appraisal drilling that we're doing. So we're right in the midst of working through those things with the integrated project teams and with Jack in St. Malo we're probably looking at some sanctioning decision in 2009. Dave Kistler - Simmons & Company: Great thanks so much for these clarifications.

Larry Nichols

CEO

Yeah. Dave, let me just add one thing. This is Larry. And that goes back to the use of the word peak on the Barnett Shale production what we really and that sort of implies this is going to ramp up quickly and then ramp down equally quickly. The model that we really see for Devon's portfolio and we do have by far the largest and most in-depth portfolio with it concentrated in the near core or the best rock that is and always will be. But what we see is that after many years of growth the rate of growth will gradually flatten out and there will be a flat plateau for an extended period of time and then a fairly gradual decline. So it is not like a, the word peak sort of implies its going to shoot up and shoot down and that is not at all what we see with the portfolio that we have there. Dave Kistler - Simmons & Company: Great. Well thank you for that clarification.

Operator

Operator

And our next question will come from the line of Joe Allman with JP Morgan. Please proceed.

Joe Allman - JP Morgan

Analyst · JP Morgan. Please proceed

Yes good morning everybody, could you tell us where the price- related reserve revisions were and just confirm, it sounds as if most of the performance related revisions were in the Barnett Shale.

Steve Hadden

Management

Yeah, I will tell you that Joe the majority of the performance revisions were in the Barnett Shale and Carthage. We had good performance revisions in Carthage as I mentioned in the call. When you look at the price effects, I think the pricing revisions we saw were principally positive revisions in the thermal projects in Canada, based on the year end pricing and then there was some impact in the Barnett Shale and a few other things across, really smaller things just across the portfolio as we look at that. From an international standpoint there was a negative price revision that was a result of simply higher prices and the impact on the production sharing contract at Azerbaijan. If you look at the performance revisions, the performance revisions came principally again from the Barnett Shale and Carthage and the reason that’s occurring is the fact that we are drilling horizontal wells in those areas and for instance one of the largest contributions to the performance revision that came from the Barnett Shale, came from wells that were a vintage of about 2003. So what we are doing is going and we are drilling these horizontal wells, we are booking them very judiciously, initially and then we looking for performance and as we get more and more well performance and see those curves flatten out, then we are having additional performance revisions. In addition to that, we work very closely together on our both our mid-stream and marketing facilities, along with the producing facilities to do things like lower line pressures, optimize flow rates, add additional compression, those type of things. And those are continuing to have an effect on the performance especially in the Barnett Shale but. These horizontal wells, for instance we are drilling them in Carthage also, we book them, we want to see how they go hyperbolic and then once we get confidence on their performance basis then you see these positive revisions come in.

Joe Allman - JP Morgan

Analyst · JP Morgan. Please proceed

Okay, it's helpful. And then where are the reserve addition, I aside from the revisions whether reserve additions as much as you expected early in 2007 and just a add on there, the finding cost in ‘07 were higher the finding cost in ‘06, and what was the big driver there and what would you be expecting in terms 2008, I just don’t need a specific number but kind of a similar finding cost in ’08 versus ’07?

Steve Hadden

Management

Relative to the additions and extensions that we saw, they were basically on target to where we would have expected to be. When you look at the, some of the issues about the finding and development cost, that may appear to be bit higher some areas. That's principally driven by what Larry talked about earlier in the call. We spend $600 million on projects that we think are going deliver great value and long-term growth for the company. But, they are not delivering any reserve in the given budget here. So I think that's going to be the principal reason of that variation that you saw there.

Joe Allman - JP Morgan

Analyst · JP Morgan. Please proceed

Okay. And around 2008 would you expect, I mean, are they similar large expenditures that aren’t necessarily going result in reserves, such that the finding cost can be about maybe roughly the same?

John Richels

President

Yeah. I think, we are going to see similar numbers in 2008.

Joe Allman - JP Morgan

Analyst · JP Morgan. Please proceed

Got it. And then really quickly cost, in the overall are you seeing cost, doing a completion cost coming down here still plateauing, could you just give us comments on that?

Steve Hadden

Management

Yeah. For a cost standpoint, overall we certainly see the rate of increase coming down on average across the business when you look this on average. I think you can roughly say that as a company the drilling and completion cost that we see are probably, escalation might average around in a 5% range or something like. But, when you look across the portfolio for instance in Canada, we've seen significant reductions in drilling and completion cost in that market, which we had anticipated and we continue to anticipate because that market was pretty over heated. On the other extreme when you see the deepwater side of our business, those costs still remain relatively high because demand for rigs etcetera is still pretty tight.

Joe Allman - JP Morgan

Analyst · JP Morgan. Please proceed

Okay, that’s very helpful. Thank you.

Vince White

President

Joe this is Vince, I might add to what Steve said that our drill-bits reserve additions for the year and the resulting, finding and development cost were really right in the sweet spots of what we had forecasted at the beginning of the year. So, it very much came in line with our expectations and those did not change throughout the year.

Joe Allman - JP Morgan

Analyst · JP Morgan. Please proceed

Okay, thanks Vince.

Operator

Operator

And our next question will come from the line of Brian Singer with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed

Brian Singer - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please proceed

Thank you. Good morning.

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please proceed

Good morning, Brian

Brian Singer - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please proceed

On Jackfish, what should we expect in terms of quarterly progression of bitumen sales, and do you have any initial thoughts based on what you've seen so far regarding steam/oil ratios?

Larry Nichols

CEO

Yeah. I think what we will see is a pretty steady rise over the next year in a little bit to the peak of 35,000 barrels a day. We've always estimated that on average, once we started steam injection and got up and running, that ramp-up could take as long as about 18 months. And we're very pleased with the reservoir performance so far. As I think we've mentioned before in some of our calls, we think the Jackfish reservoir is in the top quartile of the oil sands reservoirs. And the results that we've seen so far from the reservoir indicate that that's true. From a facility standpoint, the design looks very good. As you probably know when we begin to produce the oil and the water together here, the specific gravities of the two are very close. And we have to work through some issues on both chemicals and operations of the plant to simply line it out. And that's something that we had expected. We're working through those things right now. So we think over the year you'll just see a steady ramp-up in the volumes as we go forward.

Brian Singer - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please proceed

We should not expect full production for the second quarter of 2009?

Larry Nichols

CEO

No. We'll probably get the full production yearend this year or sometime in that timeframe.

Brian Singer - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please proceed

Okay

John Richels

President

Brian, its John. I think what's important to realize is the point that Steve was making here that as you bring these facilities on, there are stops and starts and things that we anticipate. What we're really pleased about, as Steve said, is the reservoir performance, and we haven't seen any of the very significant facilities related issues that you have in some other projects in the industry overtime. So, all of those things are positive.

Brian Singer - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please proceed

It sounds like you're well on your way to Jackfish too. Were those some of the data points that you've now seen and give you greater confidence to precede. It sounds like things are well on their way there.

Larry Nichols

CEO

Well, I think we are very eagerly waiting getting to a sanctioning decision and the regulatory approval. Obviously, with Jackfish 1 under our belt and what we are able to do there in constructing both the plant and seeing that the reservoir performances at least early on is really consistent with our thinking. That certainly does continue to encourage us from a technical standpoint on Jackfish. And we'll look at the numbers once we have the early engineering and the economics together and make that sanctioning decision sometime this year.

Brian Singer - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please proceed

Great. Similar type of question on, although you mentioned, I think it's taking a bit longer to head towards peak production, can you provide a little color and when you expect to get to that peak level now?

Larry Nichols

CEO

Yeah. What actually happened, Brian, is that we had delays and hookup in completion of the facilities initially and some of the construction issues around the drilling rate. That was one of the bigger things that slowed us down before we even began drilling the well. And then we drilled three wells, actually drilled a fourth, but it was a long reach well that was probably 4,000 meters long trying to reach out to another part of a reservoir. And we and had a drilling problem there and a float shoe failed, and essentially we've had to redrill that well. So that slowed us down a little bit and we're in the process of redrilling that well. As a matter of fact, it's nearing its PD right now. We think we'll continue to have the production growth from this point forward. Again, we've drilled 3 of about 12 to 15 wells that we'll drill in the development phase of the program. That ramp-up, we thought we'd reach the peak of about 26,000 barrels a day net this year. That will probably get to some peak in early '09.

Brian Singer - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please proceed

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Our next question will come from the line of Gil Yang with Citi. Please proceed.

Gil Yang - Citi

Analyst · Citi. Please proceed

Hi. Did you comment, Steve, on what you think the reservoir quality is for Jackfish 2 versus in comparison to Jackfish 1?

Steve Hadden

Management

I think its top quartile. We think it's the same. It's right in the same area and in and amongst the same leasehold that we have up there. So, it's going to be of similar quality.

Gil Yang - Citi

Analyst · Citi. Please proceed

Okay. Going to the Barnett you commented that it sounds like the wells are leveling off earlier than you thought. And I guess the big effect was on the 2003 vintage of wells. Are you now booking all the new wells since subsequent to 2003 with that assumption or do you potential revise up all the booking in between, for 2004 and '05, '06, 07 as they flatten out as well.

Steve Hadden

Management

Yeah. It's more the latter than the former here. We booked them with an initial factor, an end factor that they use to try and guess estimate what that hyperbolic decline will be and where they will flatten out. Once we have the performance, obviously, if they were 2003 wells, we've got a few years of performance under our belt, our confidence and certainty goes up in increasing those reserves on those wells. And then, we try and factor in technically that understanding into future wells. But we'll lean more heavily on performance in making these additions, these performance revisions. And therefore, we won't go back through and take all the wells up to the 2003 performance level. We'll just want to see the performance of each subsequent year and make those bookings. Now over time, we may adjust our initial bookings a bit higher but we probably won't take the whole bite at one time.

Gil Yang - Citi

Analyst · Citi. Please proceed

Well, given that you are seeing the improved performance in 2003. So you are saying that in 2007 you didn't book assuming that improved performance, you sort of still booking assuming the original performance?

Steve Hadden

Management

Yeah, that's kind of a, generalities are little bit tough, but when essentially we had enough performance on the '03 wells to make that adjustment, we didn't go back through to the '04 through '07 wells and make a similar, make the same adjustments. So as we get more performance and our confidence rises there, you'll see more of these performance revisions from this incremental reservoir.

Gil Yang - Citi

Analyst · Citi. Please proceed

Okay. So will the '08 wells be booked on the new knowledge of the '03 wells?

Steve Hadden

Management

That will be booked that based on our knowledge of the area, you know that it's an accumulation of knowledge and understanding and it just depends on where the wells will drill and what our engineers think is reasonable certainty for those initial bookings.

Gil Yang - Citi

Analyst · Citi. Please proceed

Okay. Last question is, maybe either Steve or Larry, could you just comment on the -- you comment that there is a long-term billion dollar spending on long-term projects. Can you just comment on roughly what the distribution of the different kinds of projects Gulf versus Brazil versus onshore resource place that kind of thing?

Larry Nichols

CEO

Well, I don't have a percentage firmly but the bulk of it is in the deepwater followed by the Jackfish 2 project for this year to pay on how much we get done, that's going to be the largest two components.

Gil Yang - Citi

Analyst · Citi. Please proceed

Is there much spending our new resource play exploration?

Larry Nichols

CEO

Oh, yes. There is a good deal of that in the east Texas, variety of areas, some of which we talked about, some of which we haven't where we're looking to out there into the future not just. I mean our goal for a long time has been not just to have the good solid short-term growth that you get out of resource plays like the Barnett Shale where we're our U.S. onshore bread and butter growth were 13% this year just from the blocking and tackling that we do on the U.S. onshore but to looking at longer-term plays that will allow us to achieve that kind of growth for a long time into the future.

Gil Yang - Citi

Analyst · Citi. Please proceed

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

And our next question will come from the line of Mark Gilman with Benchmark. Please proceed.

Mark Gilman - Benchmark

Analyst · Benchmark. Please proceed

Guys good morning. Just one Steve on the Barnett resource base in light of the favorable performance, could you perhaps update us on where you might stand vis-à-vis the prior risked estimate of overall Barnett resources and whether you're inclined to adjust recovery factor any higher?

Steve Hadden

Management

Well, we're going to update that in the very near future. We were at I think roughly 14 Bcf on that risk basis, I think which you're referring to Mark. And I think you've heard us talk about the 80-acre, the 40-acre and 20-acre wells that we'll be drilling. So this is just an incredible reservoir, that's about 11% to 13% recovery of the gas in place and we think it may go higher, but we'll update that here in the very, very near future.

Mark Gilman - Benchmark

Analyst · Benchmark. Please proceed

Okay if I could, is it correct you did not book any Cascade reserves despite sanction?

Steve Hadden

Management

No, we did not book any Lower Tertiary reserves and we did not book any Cascade reserves specifically.

Vince White

President

This is Vince, hi. I want to add for all of you that we're planning no doing an update on Barnett and some, as well as resource potential throughout our portfolio sometime in the spring and we'll be announcing a ate in the near future.

Mark Gilman - Benchmark

Analyst · Benchmark. Please proceed

Thanks guys.

Operator

Operator

And our next question will come from the line of [Jason Ganu with McGuire]. Please proceed.

Jason Ganu - McGuire

Analyst

Good morning gentlemen you had a very successful high grading of the international portfolio over the course of 2007. I just wanted to see if you are reasonably happy now with the composition of that portfolio with the focus on drilling in Brazil and China or are there are areas that you are actually looking to supplement the international portfolio with. Then I guess on the other side of that is there anything within the portfolio that you would consider non-core, think it maybe ACG in particular.

Larry Nichols

CEO

We will be happy with the portfolio once we have successfully exited out of West Africa and we are hopeful that we'll get that done some time here fairly soon, which I say is the middle of the year. At that point of time we will be happy with the portfolio and we'll see how it revolves. Brazil in particular is an area where significant reserves have been discovered. We've got, as Steve described, a large portfolio there and we very much want to see how that plays out. Azerbaijan still has some growth, they are still doing some expanding that field and it's not a core area for us in the sense that in areas where we were going to grow or expand but it is a quality resource for us to keep in the portfolio. We have made and we are making lot of money out of that and China also is an area where we've got an interesting portfolio where we are using a lot of the same technology and expertise, we have in the US deepwater in offshore China and offshore of Brazil. So, we'll be fairly happy with that portfolio.

Jason Ganu - McGuire

Analyst

Thanks for an insight Larry. If I can just follow up with one quick one, my recollection is that the debentures or the convertible in the Chevron shares mature this year. Is there any accounting treatment that we should be looking for moving forward and I think you actually have quite a bit more value in the Chevron shares and what the debentures are reliable for?

Larry Nichols

CEO

Yeah you are referring to the exchangeable debentures that are exchangeable into the Chevrons shares that we own and you are correct that they mature the share and we have several options available to us and we will consider those options and those would most senses from a business perspective and really aren’t prepared to say what that is at this point Jason, by the way welcome back.

Jason Ganu - McGuire

Analyst

Thanks then.

Larry Nichols

CEO

Jason I will remind you that to the extent that we had some of those exchangeable debentures [10 or 2] are in the last while we paid them off using our strong balance sheet to do that.

Jason Ganu - McGuire

Analyst

Absolutely, thanks a lot guys.

Larry Nichols

CEO

Operator we will take one more question.

Operator

Operator

And our last question will come from the line of David Heikkinen, with Tudor Pickering. Please proceed.

David Heikkinen -Tudor Pickering

Analyst · David Heikkinen, with Tudor Pickering. Please proceed

Good morning just I want to talk a little bit about the strategic decision to start hedging in ’08 and then thoughts going in to ’09, given a pretty clean balance sheet and generating free cash flow. Could you just talk through the decision making process and start,. Locking your -- some hedges?

Larry Nichols

CEO

Yes, what’s the concern in particularly earlier this share, early in January with the large amount of gas in storage and with the twin concerns of both U.S. hiding in some kind of recession, as well as the overhang of gas that existed at that time we had some concerns about the natural gas markets very short-term it might be that they not be volatile. As I said in my comments the concerning about gas storage has dissipated somewhat with the record withdrawals that we had so that gas storage now, inline with five year average. But we are still, we still have two more months to go before the winter is out, who know when that’s going to be. We just started would be prudent, when we looked at the fairly remarkable swabs and color is that we get off, we thought getting a little insurance by giving up a little upside above numbers that that we thought were fairly high to get a little downtime protection seemed prudent to give us a little insurance against short-term volatility.

David Heikkinen -Tudor Pickering

Analyst · David Heikkinen, with Tudor Pickering. Please proceed

So, from early January to now, would it be a surprise for you to do more hedges? Are you seeing a change now and where you think the commodity price will be?

Larry Nichols

CEO

Well, we've got about pushing two thirds of our expected gas production hedged, which is a rather large percentage. The concern is not that much on oil because there are so many places around the world that can drive oil little prices higher. I think there is more upside pressure on oil than downside in general, and worldwide economies, they are not just the US economy, which has more impact on natural gas prices. So I think we're fairly comfortable with where we are now.

David Heikkinen -Tudor Pickering

Analyst · David Heikkinen, with Tudor Pickering. Please proceed

Thanks Larry.

John Richels

President

And David, just to reiterate a point here, we were able to put some of these hedges in place in the last short while at what we think are very, very good prices because of the cold weather that we are having. Nothing has changed other than we recognize there's potential for a lot of volatilities. There's still two months of winter left and you know how that's going to look. Then there is a bit more uncertainty around prices in the short-term. The point I want to make is we're really looking at a short-term perspective here. We still remain or the belief that we're going to see relatively strong prices through the end of 2008 and in 2009 on the natural gas side. So, it is really just to address the concerns or the uncertainties that Larry mentioned in the shorter term.

David Heikkinen -Tudor Pickering

Analyst · David Heikkinen, with Tudor Pickering. Please proceed

Thanks, John.

Larry Nichols

CEO

And as you correctly alluded when you started off your question, we have very little debt, very strong balance sheet, very strong cash flow and cash flow margins. Budget for the year is well within our expected cash flow. So it's really no change in any of those drivers that we've talked about in the past is driving. It's seeing some remarkably attractive collars and swaps that you can get of in the phase of some concern over volatility. Since that was our last question, let me just say in summary that we're very pleased with 2007, not only for what we accomplished in that year alone with production growth of 12%, taking reserves to an all-time high, good strong earnings, record earnings, record earnings cash flow, but more importantly with what it portends for the future. As we look at the success rate we had with the drill-bit, bringing in very attractive F&D from across our portfolio, very attractive for reserve growth, and seeing that the asset quality we had and the strength we have will continue that into 2008 and beyond. So we're very excited about 2008 coming off of a very strong 2007. With that, we thank you for your attention and appreciate your interest in Devon. Take care.

Operator

Operator

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes your presentation. You may now disconnect. Good day.