Chesapeake Energy Corporation (NASDAQ:CHK) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Noel Parks: Great. And with your discussion in the release about making some adjustments to the rig count, and you also mentioned you saw other operators some signs of slowing. I’m just curious, have you €“ well, I guess two things, have you gotten any fresh body language from your vendors around €“ how they are sounding around pricing. I’m just curious, maybe when your next test case is going to be as far as having services where a contract is close to expiring, you might be going out for a bit and have a chance to sort of test the market on pricing.

Josh Viets: Yes. So on the inflation question specifically, at this point, just with the oil commodity markets remaining somewhat constructive, we’re simply not seeing much softening in service costs to date. There are some areas that we expect to pull back as we get into the second part of the year. One of those is OCTG. But right now, as we look at our inflationary estimates, we do expect to see some year-over-year inflation in the Haynesville, probably something pushing 10% on a cost per foot basis, we would expect the Marcellus to really be less than 5% in the low single digits. But one of things I would point out to you is that as we look at our inflation, and we look at year-over-year inflation, it’s important to us to think about it on a net basis.

So i.e., what are those things that we’re doing to extract cost out of our business. And one of those is we will drill longer laterals this year where our lateral length is going to be up 6% to 7% year-over-year. And then the other thing that’s going to impact it, again, if you think about on a net inflation basis, it’s just a well mix. So for example, in the Haynesville last year, we tilled 70% of our wells were in the Haynesville 30% in the Bossier. This year, it’s going to be much more weighted towards the Haynesville and less so towards the Bossier. It’s about 90-10. So that also will impact our inflation. So when we look at things at a corporate level, that net inflation is somewhere in the low single-digit. Now as far as flexibility with our contracts to go out and rebid work, we have a lot of flexibility, probably more so on the frac side.

But again, I think until we start seeing any softening in the oil markets, we’re not sure, at least we’re not baking any material cost inflation as we worked into the back half of this year.

Noel Parks: Great. Thanks a lot.

Operator: The next question comes from Phillips Johnston with Capital One. Please go ahead.

Phillips Johnston: Hi, guys. Thank you. First, just a clarification on your plans to reduce rig and frac activity for modeling purposes, in the release, you mentioned plans to drop three rigs in total, but maintaining your existing number of frac crews, but in the slide deck, you referenced dropping two rigs and two frac crews. It sounds like from your earlier comments that it is three rigs in total, but what’s the plan on the frac crew side?

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