Kosmos Energy Ltd. (NYSE:KOS) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Neal Shah: Yes. Just Bob, yes, you’re right. In terms of — yes, there’s minimal infrastructure to be laid and therefore, it should be very cost-effective tieback program. And we didn’t vision we developed it similar to how we’ve done Winterfell and other projects in terms of the staged phase development to where we have a single well EPS, where we install a full line of the facility and then grow the development over time with more information from the well in the reservoir over time. So I think we’ve talked about the past of sort of S&D in sort of $10 to $15 range generically. Yes, I think that’s — this would squarely fall in that range.

Operator: Our next question is from Neil Mehta with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question

Neil Mehta: Good morning, team. Thanks for the update today. The first question I had was just around capital spending.. Can you bridge us from your previous CapEx guide to the current one? And how much of that was project related versus inflation. And as you think about 2024, recognizing you don’t have the full numbers, but how should we think about the fair way that we — to the extent you’re able to provide that?

Andrew Inglis: Yes. Great. I’ll have Neal pick that up. Neal?

Neal Shah: So yes, on ’23, I think the two biggest pieces were really around the Tortue acceleration that Andy talked about with that being $30 million and about $20 million of it was sort of the additional drilling sort of additional two wells or 1.5 wells in Ghana at Jubilee. There’s $30 million on that and then the $20 million was really additional drilling at Tiberius post the success and the extensive sort of logging campaigns. So that sort of took us from sort of — we were trending towards the high end of the range, and that basically moved us from 750 to 800. So that’s kind of the acceleration of that sort of what we call value-adding activity into ’23. If I look sort of going forward, I think we’ve talked about sort of a normalized CapEx, right, post our three big projects of, call it, 300 to 350 of maintenance and 200 to 250 of growth, which sort of gets you around 550 of steady-state CapEx for the company.

’24 is a bit of a transition year because we still have the completion of Tortue and Winterfell the residual CapEx related to those as well as the sort of steady-state CapEx. So again, we haven’t given it ’24 guidance yet. We’ll do that in February. But I expect that ’24 will fall in between the 2, where we are sort of this year and then sort of the steady-state level as we finish those two key projects.

Neil Mehta: The follow-up is just around Phase I and maybe you can get us a little bit more clarity around the work stream that you highlighted, which has the potential to slip into the second quarter. But as of now, you’re still on track for first gas in the first quarter can you get us into the field and give us more granularity, so we understand what specifically you’re talking about?

Andrew Inglis: Yes, no, sure, Neal. Yes, if you sort of go through the key work streams. We’ve talked about the hub terminals sort of being finished, handed over to operations. That was a big milestone in the quarter. You then look at the FLNG vessel, which will obviously be more in the hub terminal. That leaves Singapore around the — in this quarter, and it will get to site at the beginning of next year. So sort of not sitting on the critical path. The big breakthrough in the quarter was around getting all the subsea architecture finished, re-contracting with dual-seas and side-pen. That work starts early next month and with a clear program to complete in the first quarter. So I feel good about that. The piece that — the issue we’re asking with at the moment is just around the FPSO.