Coterra Energy Inc. (NYSE:CTRA) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Leo Mariani: Okay. No, that’s helpful. But it sounds like the message is you think the Upper can be very, very competitive with other gas assets as you look at it today?

Blake Sirgo: Yes. I mean there’s parts of the field that are super competitive, but I’ll just caveat the Lower Marcellus in this asset is some of the absolute best rock in all of the Lower 48. And I don’t think it’s going to compete with the cream with a crop lower that’s been drilled. But there’s — it’s still very competitive in our capital allocation.

Thomas Jorden: Yes. And Leo, competitiveness is always a function of well performance, but also price. And that’s a nice thing about Coterra where we said is we really do have an asset mix allows us to shift capital and allocate it based on those changes. So competitiveness of assets is not a static thing.

Leo Mariani: Okay, I appreciate it. Thank you.

Operator: Next, we’ll go to Charles Meade at Johnson Rice.

Charles Meade: Good morning, Tom to you and team. Just one question for me, and it’s around the way you guys are going to approach the Marcellus in the back half of the year. I think you — I heard you mentioned in your prepared comments that your plan has you guys turning some wells on in July. And as I think about recent history up in the Marcellus, a lot of times, we can see a good price bounce in the summer, but then we see another about a weakness in the Fall when the cooling demand goes away. So is there a scenario where you guys bring some wells on in July and then curtail them or kind of you shut them in again in the Fall? Or is it more along the lines of once you guys decide to bring them on? You’re just going to — you’re going to — you’re going to keep them on and does that bias you to turn them on later?

Thomas Jorden: Yes. I’ll just — I’ll answer your question with the analogy. We’ve said from day 1 that the way we manage our program is not a rifle shot, it’s a guided missile. So sitting here and saying we’re going to turn wells on in July, that’s talking about a rifle shot. We’re going to guide that missile every step of the way. We typically don’t manage our production up and down with the near-term price file. It usually takes something structural for us to make production decisions around price. And that’s the luxury of having low-cost supply, by the way. Right now, we have a structural issue with low gas prices, which is why we’ve turned those in line. And I’ll just say that July is what we’re carrying in our current model, and we’re going to make the best business decision and model will be down.

So I want to make sure of that. But I don’t think you’d see us ramp our production up and down with a changing price file. We just like to get north of a place where with the low-cost supply, we don’t have to worry about it.

Charles Meade: Got it, that’s helpful. Thank you.

Operator: And that concludes our Q&A session. I will now turn the conference back over to Tom Jorden for closing remarks.

Thomas Jorden: Yes. I just want to thank everybody. Great set of questions. We are very pleased to present the results we presented last night and look forward to repeating that. And as I said many times on this call, it’s our — talking about results is the conversation we want to have. So thank you all very much for your participation this morning.

Operator: And this concludes today’s conference call. Again, thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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