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VAALCO Energy, Inc. (EGY)

Q2 2014 Earnings Call· Fri, Aug 8, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Second Quarter 2014 Earnings Report. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, there will be an opportunity for questions. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Chief Financial Officer, Greg Hullinger. Please go ahead.

Gregory Hullinger

Management

Thanks Michelle. Thank you for joining us on the call today to review the company’s second quarter 2014 operating and financial performance and thank you for your understanding and accommodating us as we rescheduled this call. As we mentioned in the press release issued this morning VAALCO executives are in Washington DC attending meetings associated with the US Africa Leaders Summit. On short notice, a key meeting was scheduled at the original time of the conference call and felt it was important to take the meeting and reschedule our conference call to this afternoon. After I cover the forward-looking statements narrative, Steve Guidry, VAALCO Energy’s Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board will speak on the key issues followed by a financial review that I will present and then Russell Scheirman, the Company’s President and Chief Operating Officer will provide a review of our operations in the three west African countries where we have exploration and production activity. Following the presentations, we will be pleased to answer any questions you may have. With that, let me proceed with our forward-looking statements guidance. During the course of this conference call, the company will be making forward-looking statements. We caution you that any statement that is not a statement of historical fact is a forward-looking statement. Forward-looking statements are those concerning VAALCO’s plans, expectations, future drilling, and completion activities, expected capital expenditures, prospect evaluations, negotiations with governments and third parties, reserve growth, and other operations. Statements made during this conference call that address activity, events or developments that VAALCO expects, beliefs or anticipates, will, or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements. These statements are based on assumptions made by VAALCO based on its experience perception of historical trends, current conditions, expected future developments and other factors it believes are appropriate in the circumstances. Such statements are subject to a number of assumptions, risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond VAALCO’s control. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and those actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. VAALCO disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. These and other risks are described in the yesterday’s press release titled Forward-looking statements and in the reports we filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, notably the 2013 Form 10-K filed with the Commission on March 13, 2014. Please note that this conference call is being recorded and without taking care of, let me turn the meeting over to Steve Guidry. Steve?’

Steve Guidry

Management

Thank you, Greg and hello everyone. Thank you for joining us this afternoon. As Greg mentioned, Russell, Greg and myself are in Washington DC today participating in events surrounding the US Africa Leaders Summit where we are having a number of meetings with high level government officials from various West African countries. We saw this event as an excellent opportunity to deepen our relationships with key leaders from the region. With that said, let me touch on a few of our exciting highlights for the second quarter 2014. Our second quarter performance rebounded as predicted with the benefit of an April 1 lifting and a June 30 lifting which left only a minimum volume of inventory in our FPSO at quarter end. In addition to our increased sales volumes, strong pricing in the first part of quarter the coupled with lower lifting costs have served to significantly bolster our second quarter earnings. As production from the Etame Marine block continues to meet or exceed our expectations. We remain confident in our ability to deliver our targeted operating cash flow and income for the 2014 calendar year. Equally exciting is the steady progress we have made in the second quarter on various projects in Gabon Angola and Equatorial Guinea. Russell will be reporting on the projects in much more detail later but I do want to congratulate our Gabon expansion project team on reaching several important project milestones. First our two support jackets successfully made their voyage to Gabon and are in the process of being installed as we speak. The two new processing platforms are decks sale for Gabon at the end of July and are scheduled to arrive in the first week in September. We were successful and fully commissioning the utility systems on both platforms prior to their…

Gregory Hullinger

Management

Thank you, Steve. I will be providing an overview of the key financial information for the second quarter of 2014 that we reported yesterday in our 10-Q filing with the SEC and our earnings press release. The company reported strong net income of $24.7 million or $0.43 per diluted share for the second quarter of 2014. This compares to a net income of $7.1 million or $0.12 per diluted share in the second quarter of 2013. Quarterly income in the second quarter of 2014 was over three times the income reported in the same period in 2013. For the first six months of the year the company reported net income of $17.7 or $0.31 per diluted share and this compares to net income of $14.3 million or $0.25 per diluted share in the second quarter of 2013. The net income for the first half of 2014 was 24% higher than the net income reported for the first half of 2013. The significant increase in net income for the second quarter should not be misery to those of you that follow our company. The largest factor is the timing and size of crude oil liftings from our operations at Offshore Gabon. We post our liftings on our website for your convenience so that you can access this information. You may recall that we had a sizable crude inventory of the FPSO vessels at the end of the first quarter that we lifted on April 1 2014 the very first day of the second quarter. Then two additional liftings occurred during the second quarter including a lifting on the last day of the quarter as Steve mentioned earlier. The resulting high volume of crude sold during the quarter which was a combination of inventory available at the beginning of the second quarter…

Russell Scheirman

President

Thanks, Greg. So I have progress to report on our platform installation projects at Etame and right through with the government on our Onshore Gabon Mutamba project and Equatorial Guinea and I’ll also update on our Angola activity. In Gabon and Etame, production averaged 18,000 barrels per day during the second quarter which is 4400 barrels net per day to VAALCO. The production increase in the second quarter due to the successful side-track of the South Tchibala 1H well which had powdered casing. Later this month, the FPSO owners have scheduled a six day full field maintenance shutdown to upgrade the fire and safety systems onboard the vessel which will impact our third quarter production. On the construction front, as Steve mentioned, we are installing the first jackets, for the two new platforms to be commissioned later this year. A second jacket has arrived in the area and it’s awaiting completion of the first installation. These platforms are for Etame field expansion and for the development of the Southeast Etame discover and the North Tchibala discovery. The Emas heavy lift vessel, the Constellation is performing these platform installations. Both of the decks for the platforms were shipped from Honolulu, Louisiana last month and will arrive in Gabon in early September. The decks are currently off the coast of South Africa one of them is near Venezuela, one is around near – and their air – weigh for (Inaudible) hurricane threat. So we were happy to get them through the Caribbean without any issues. That will be lifted on to the jackets upon arrival and then commissioning will follow to make the platforms ready for development drilling. We will be drilling six new development wells in Etame in Southeast Etame during late 2014 and 2015. Additionally, we will drill a dry…

Operator

Operator

And your first question comes from the line of Leo Mariani of RBC. Please go ahead.

Leo Mariani

Analyst · RBC. Please go ahead

Hey guys. Trying to get a sense of what your current production is in the Etame complex right now?

Russell Scheirman

President

It’s a little below what we did in the second quarter but we are going to have that six day shut down. We will lose 100,000 barrels or so as a result of that shut down , but we are frankly been very pleased with – we haven’t had any drilling now for almost a year and we – the wells have held up quite nicely.

Leo Mariani

Analyst · RBC. Please go ahead

Okay, in terms of your drilling, that’s going to start, I guess, later this year on the Etame complex, when would you expect production contribution from that?

Steven Guidry

Analyst · RBC. Please go ahead

Leo, this is Steve. We are anticipating the rig arriving in October. We anticipate that the Etame platform, the new Etame platform will be ready to receive the rig. It’s 45 days, so we should see our first contribution at or around used in probably sometime in December on the first well.

Leo Mariani

Analyst · RBC. Please go ahead

Okay, and just in terms of your CapEx budget for the year here, if I recall correctly, some of the CapEx assumes drilling in both Angola and EG, do you guys think you are going to spend that whole budget here in 2014?

Steven Guidry

Analyst · RBC. Please go ahead

We had initially budgeted $117 million for the year. That assumes as you point out – that assumes a pre-salt well in Angola and it assumed the exploration well in EG. Instead of drilling the pre-salt well in Angola. You are right, we will drill a post-salt well which will be lower cost and with our recent development in EG, substituting the Venus development putting it ahead of the exploration well, we will not be drilling Southwest Grande. So if you do the math and all that, our $117 now is right at a $102 million.

Leo Mariani

Analyst · RBC. Please go ahead

Okay, that’s helpful and I guess, in terms of Venus, I guess, I had always thought that that was somewhat of a marginal discovery, but clearly you guys are making plans here to move forward and develop it. Can you just give me a little bit more color around that and I guess, you think this is going to be nicely economic or you largely pursuing this in order to offset some of the exploration costs?

Steven Guidry

Analyst · RBC. Please go ahead

No, it’s really just a recognition that it provides us an opportunity to bring in some cash flow a lot sooner. One of the things that makes Venus very competitive is the contract. It’s a very good contract. We have a 70 cost recovery. One of the real benefits is that the contractor receives 90% of the profit oil and the first 25 million barrels produced. Although the country does have a 35% income tax, it’s still is a very favorable contract. And so, we just saw it as an opportunity and what contributed to this and our frankness is also a change in the management in G-Petrol who is our 58% working interest owner on the block. We were able to convince them to go this route and largely due to a change in management there.

Leo Mariani

Analyst · RBC. Please go ahead

All right, and I guess, can you just talk about on the operating agreement with G-Petrol that’s some of that’s likely to get finalized in the near future. How should we think about that?

Steven Guidry

Analyst · RBC. Please go ahead

We are having some of those conversations coincidentally what we are hearing in Washington with G-Petrol and with the government. We are planning to meet with the ministry in the month of September to present the final plan. So, we are very hopeful that that will all be settled sometime in September.

Leo Mariani

Analyst · RBC. Please go ahead

Okay, and I guess, in terms of your oil price realization, I guess, you guys clearly have an need plan for pursuing the oil here which I think was implemented in the second quarter. I know you said pricing was a little bit below Brent this quarter and Brent was kind of above in the past. Can you talk to how that new mechanism works on the pricing? Are you guys receiving the price on the actual day when you received the cargos? I think in the past, you guys were received sort of an average monthly price when had a lifting. Can you talk more about that?

Russell Scheirman

President

Yes, this is Russ. The proposed pricing mechanism is the average of dated Brent for the five days after the lifting. The way it’s actually turned out on the first two liftings under this gain which hope went into the UK. They asked that it’d be priced the five days around the days that it was being offloaded. We agreed to that because, they were by far the best bidder. Under this arrangement we have a broker that goes out, looks for bids, and brings them to us and we are able to choose. The other benefit is we also control the timing of the liftings a little better. I think you saw in the second quarter how we were able nail that lifting at the end of the quarter. We got a little bit lucky on the first lifting. If price June 16 to 20 which was one of the highest and graded Iraq, from Syria and all the oil price jump then we got a $113 plus for that lifting and the lifting at the end of the June was in the low hundreds. We are currently getting ready to lift. In the middle of August we did not have a lifting in July, but we have a big lifting coming up in the middle of August and we are still discussing with a potential buyer what the pricing dates will be around there. But it’s no longer that where we get the average price, the set price against Robby Light were actually pricing against competitive bids from potential buyers.

Leo Mariani

Analyst · RBC. Please go ahead

Okay, and that was helpful. And I guess, just a follow-up on the CapEx question, what would you expect CapEx to be on just the Etame concession in the second half of 2014 here?

Russell Scheirman

President

Second half, total for the year, our net at Etame was right at $70 million. So, I’d have to venture and guess to tell exactly what portion of that $70 million dispersed in the second half. But let us look that – we will see we can get back to you on that, Leo.

Leo Mariani

Analyst · RBC. Please go ahead

Okay, and that sounds good. And I guess, just on expenses, can you give us a little bit more color around those clearly your LOE was down substantially here in the second quarter, I think part of that was like a reimbursement. Can you kind of quantify what the reinvestment what we should expect LOE to be in the second half or we have to think about it on a per barrel basis?

Gregory Hullinger

Management

This is Greg. LOE, in a quarter typically runs about $8 million. So, the combination of first quarter, second quarter is pretty close to that. Although it didn’t have very much in a way of work over costs, but normal, it’s about $8 million. So we had a couple of items in there that we were correcting for including an accrual, true-up that caused our entire first quarter OpEx to be overstated a little bit. That’s kind of the run gate, it’s about $8 million a quarter.

Leo Mariani

Analyst · RBC. Please go ahead

Okay, that’s helpful and I guess, in the N’Gongui development, do you guys have an estimate of sort of rough CapEx that you may have to spend to get the first oil there?

Gregory Hullinger

Management

We do. It’s somewhere between $70 million and $90 million growth and we are responsible for half of that. That would be for a three well initial development tie-back to the Atora facility. And we are guessing those wells are going to be in the 1500 to 2500 barrels a day range. There is a gap cap on this discovery and we are we will have to play around with the wells to make sure we don’t pull gas. So we will be studying that. We will be modeling that. But we are pretty excited that we finally got this thing moving down the pike.

Leo Mariani

Analyst · RBC. Please go ahead

All right, that’s it for me. Thanks guys.

Gregory Hullinger

Management

Thanks, Leo.

Operator

Operator

Okay, thank you. And the next question is from the line of Jamie Wilen of Wilen Management. Please go ahead.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · Jamie Wilen of Wilen Management. Please go ahead

Hey, it’s (Inaudible). A couple questions on Angola, we have not gotten paid the reimbursement yet. Have we billed that?

Gregory Hullinger

Management

We have billed it, we have not been paid it. We have not really forced the issue pending receipt and the final signature on this three year extension and then we’ll get heavy about it.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · Jamie Wilen of Wilen Management. Please go ahead

Okay, and getting the signature on the expansion is from one Sonangol arm to another Sonangol arm and – but it still take us a long period of time to have that done?

Gregory Hullinger

Management

It’s from the contractor which is Sonangol EP. It’s equivalent of the DG aids that we deal with in Gabon. So, the Sonangol PP which is the national oil company, the private national oil company and VAALCO have signed a document that Sonangol EP generated by the way. They are the ones that presented the extension products signed. We’ve signed it and sent it back to them. And they keep telling us it’s in eminent but you saw how long it took to you to sign the partner and things just take a while there.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · Jamie Wilen of Wilen Management. Please go ahead

Okay, and when you sign the – or the new term sheet for the PSC from Mutamba, is that, are the terms similar they are than they were beforehand?

Gregory Hullinger

Management

They are - the rub was, we got caught right up against this new petroleum law that the Gabonese government has recently passed and we have some terms that were not in sync with the new law. There is a couple new items that they want you to contribute to such as the social, redevelopment funds and environmental fund, the big arm wrestle was over the royalty rates. They’ve set minimum royalty rates that were higher than our higher royalty rates that we had to concede some there but then we got things back in terms we got a higher cost of oil recovery factor. There is a new – in the new law the contractor is responsible for paying the income tax. In the old law the government was responsible, we were able to keep if where the government will pay the income tax. So we lost some, we got some back. All in all, maybe they want a few points, but it’s reasonably comfortable with what had before.

Steven Guidry

Analyst · Jamie Wilen of Wilen Management. Please go ahead

I think it’s fair to say, Jamie, that there was a slight deterioration in the NPV but economics for the development is still very robust.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · Jamie Wilen of Wilen Management. Please go ahead

Very good. And lastly given the, your exploration activities in the back, what would you expect your tax rate to be on y our oil in the second half?

Gregory Hullinger

Management

In Gabon we should keep the COGS handful for the balance of the year.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · Jamie Wilen of Wilen Management. Please go ahead

Okay, very good. Thanks, that was well done.

Gregory Hullinger

Management

Thank you, Jamie.

Operator

Operator

Okay, thank you, and the next question is from the line of Joe Pratt [ph], private investor. Please go ahead.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · Jamie Wilen of Wilen Management. Please go ahead

Yes, just a quick question as to and I think you’ve already said this when do you expect to spud the well in Equatorial Guinea, the Venus well?

Steven Guidry

Analyst · RBC. Please go ahead

We, IT would be – as Russell pointed out, this would be a development. So we are talking about two producers and an injector and our first step will be to get all the approvals necessary to move forward on the development out of the exploration. But we probably would not see – we’d not see a drilling the producing wells after we’ve completed all the facility work which will be sometime in 2016.

Russell Scheirman

President

We’ve got to order Subsea threes which are about in 18 months advance order and we’ve got order flexible flow lines in umbilical which are also about a one year plus. So this is pushing the actual drilling phase back considerably.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · Jamie Wilen of Wilen Management. Please go ahead

Okay, and I saw from prior slides, prior company’s government crown they estimated that Venus well had reserves of 18 million barrels and then around it in the block like was potentially 185 million barrels, Do you want to comment on recent seismic analysis of those estimates ?

Russell Scheirman

President

That 18 million number is kind of the middle of our range for what we know there is upside within Venus to the northwest within the turbidite that prospect comprises. We obviously don’t carry the two major prospects. That you said 180 million, we are not that high. We are probably more like 100 to 140 depending on how what we call Marte pans out. The southwest Grande has a large channel sands but it’s hard to know whether they are going to be full or half full whether it has been broached, that probably got the highest potential impact at the Southwest Grande. The market prospect is, it could be big, but it’s a stratigraphic play they can be full forever or they can just have a little bit of the top or they can be breached, so.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · Jamie Wilen of Wilen Management. Please go ahead

Okay, and then moving over to the subject of Block 5 in Angola, you’ve announced in January processing more seismic with Sonangol. Have you been able to talk about any conclusions and the implications of that for the Bundee prospect?

Russell Scheirman

President

Yes, I think what we can say is that the – Joe that, we were hesitant to purchase that data until we saw that the government was prepared to extend the license. And once we saw that then we went up and bought the data, which is why we are sitting here today without the data having been fully processed and analyzed. And so, that will be done in the first quarter of 2015 and the government understands that and it’s part of why they have an expectation as we do of ourselves that we will be drilling that pre-salt well sometimes in the late 2015 early 2016 timeframe. But all we have to-date in the deeper portion of the block are 2D seismic lines. And yes, the 3D dataset will have a significant impact on Bundee. It will allow us to shore up that structure or perhaps identify other structures on the block that they’d be more promising.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · Jamie Wilen of Wilen Management. Please go ahead

I read an – unrelated to you folks, a white paper that was talking about that area about the potential size of the structures after the 3D analyzed and they were talking about much bigger volume than you’ve talked about, some are between 1 billion barrels and 2 billion barrels. Is that specious or is that worth considering?

Russell Scheirman

President

No, there are prospects that size out of the ultra deep water but the ones we are looking t are not that big but they are big, they are several 100 million barrels.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · Jamie Wilen of Wilen Management. Please go ahead

Right. Okay thank you.

Russell Scheirman

President

Thank you.

Gregory Hullinger

Management

And as a follow-on we were able to get the number for the second half CapEx spend in Etame and it’s between $20 million and $32 million.

Operator

Operator

Okay. Thank you and the next question is from the line of Neil Nelson of NNI. Please go ahead.

Neil Nelson

Analyst · Neil Nelson of NNI. Please go ahead

Good afternoon, I was just curious about the shift in priorities in Equatorial Guinea and how do you size an FPSO without knowing the potential for Southwest Grande if you proceed with a developments of the Venus prospects?

Russell Scheirman

President

It’s certainly an issue. We will be in the market for a vessel with ample storage capacity i.e. 1 million barrels to allow that if we needed to we could expand the FPSO capacity. We will looking for a 30,000 to 50,000 barrel a day FPSO and we’ll just have to see what’s out there in the marketplace and the FPSO marketplace where these types of projects is very much a opportunity driven exercise. You don’t go out to have a special purpose FPSO built for 20 million barrel project you find one that’s finished on another project. It can be put it as dry-dock modified as little bit and then re-used at a good price. We just think though that to have that cash flow as a back stop those exploration wells will tax deductible and we’ll be getting 90% of the profit oil and the cost oil. We’ll just greatly diminish the overall risk to the consortium to the project./

Neil Nelson

Analyst · Neil Nelson of NNI. Please go ahead

And my next question is, what are the hydraulic pumping limits? For example, first, let’s take Etame. What are the distance limits that you could pump a well to the FPSO?

Russell Scheirman

President

In Etame? Well, we have completions that are three or four miles away from the FPSO. They have dual flow lines that can be paid to help with flow assurance. We flow the Avouma pipeline 15 kilometers or 10 miles. Again, we have the ability to peak that line. I think we have 450 pounds pressure at the platform to push that oil to 10 miles over to the FPSO. So you can pretty good distances if you want to. Subsea gets expensive just because of the dual flow lines and all that come up you need for the flow assurance though. So, - but we don’t have that same problem to the extent we do at Etame where we are producing Subsea with this very waxy crude. We don’t have that problem in Equatorial Guinea. It’s post-salt crude it’s got a lot more gas in it. It’s even a little bit higher gravity. So, we could probably go a fairly good way in Equatorial Guinea with the Subsea systems gas lifting back to an FPSO.

Neil Nelson

Analyst · Neil Nelson of NNI. Please go ahead

And, you mentioned the pumping pressure from the pipeline, does that imply for Etame that you could actually, beside using the ESP on the well, especially increase the pressure by using a pump from the platform to get more distance?

Russell Scheirman

President

We could but those ESPs can go to pretty high pressures.

Neil Nelson

Analyst · Neil Nelson of NNI. Please go ahead

Okay. So would you say it’s a 10 mile limit or?

Russell Scheirman

President

As we need to go 20.

Neil Nelson

Analyst · Neil Nelson of NNI. Please go ahead

20, okay. All right that concludes my questions.

Russell Scheirman

President

Thanks Neil.

Operator

Operator

Okay. Thank you. And the next question is from the line of Gavin (Inaudible) of RBC. Please go ahead. Okay and they released from the queue. And at this time, there are no further questions in queue. Back to you gentlemen.

Steven Guidry

Analyst · this time, there are no further questions in queue. Back to you gentlemen

Okay, well, we appreciate everyone’s time. We really appreciate everyone’s flexibility in allowing us to move our call for this afternoon and again we look forward to meeting with you with a positive third quarter report.

Operator

Operator

Okay, thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, this conference will be made available for replay after 5 O'clock' PM today through September 7th at midnight. You may access AT&T Executive Replay System at any time by dialing 1-800-475-6701 and entering the access of 333863 international participants dial 320-365-3844 and again that access is 333863. And that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for your participation and for using AT&T Executive Teleconference Service. You may now disconnect.