Operator: The next question comes from Neal Dingmann from Truist.
Neal Dingmann: My first question is on maybe for John just on the regional activity. Specifically, I’m just wondering, how do you view sort of upcoming quarterly plans for the Bakken and Permian? And it seems like the Bakken activity remains brisk with 20 plus wells to sales quarterly while the Permian incremental activity has gone back to a couple wells.
Lee Tillman: Yes. I think, naturally, there’s going to be some ebb and flow from a capital allocation standpoint. First of all, I just want to recognize the Bakken team had a tremendous third quarter and that was a, as usual, that was a combination of things. We brought on some fantastic wells. Execution efficiency was strong, which we’ve already talked about, so we’re getting more wells to sell today. The team did an amazing job of keeping our facilities, up and running. I mean, our most profitable barrels are the ones that we’ve already invested in. Keeping it online, doing things like very aggressive workover programs. All of these things are contributing to that very strong performance that you saw in the Bakken. But again, we’re going to balance, capital allocation across.
That’s one of the beauties of the multi basin model, and we’re going to move that capital and take advantage of the efficiency that we have across all the bases. I don’t know, Mike, if you wanted to add anything else.
Mike Henderson: Maybe just the other, the only other thing I’d add, Neil, is don’t interpret lack of wells to sales as lack of activity. We got 9 rigs running at the moment. We got a couple of JV rigs running. We’ve got 3 rigs running in Bakken City and Eagle Ford. We’ve actually got 3 running in between Oklahoma and Northern and Permian. So, I think that’s an indicator. I think the value that we place in that asset and the potential future upside I think is going to be, a key contributor for us next year is just maybe well as the sales in the fourth quarter and third quarter, for that matter, just down a little bit, but wouldn’t read too much into it.
Neal Dingmann: And then, Lee, just a follow-up. I’m just wondering, how does the broad M&A market look today in terms of just potential deals or quality of deals out there versus, it’s interesting. I would say versus exactly a year ago today when you announced the Ensign deal?
Lee Tillman: Well, the Ensign deal for us was a little bit of a unicorn in the sense that it did tick all the boxes in our criteria. And as we look at what’s in the market today or rumored to be in the market today, I have to say, frankly, that they really don’t tick the boxes on our criteria. They may tick 1 or 2, possibly, but we can be patient. I mean, we have a tremendous amount of organic opportunity that was made only stronger with the addition of Ensign. Remember, Ensign added 600 plus wells into the Eagle Ford, very high quality wells. And keep in mind, there were already 700 plus existing wells, many of those with earlier early designs for the completions, and we took no credit for redevelopment and refrac, which based on our legacy experience in the Eagle Ford, we know will ultimately compete for capital as well.
So when I look at what’s out there today, Neil, we’re just not seeing anything that would really fit, our criteria, and there’s just no need for us to compromise.
Operator: The next question comes from Phillips Johnston from Capital One.
Phillips Johnston : Lee, you just touched on the 190 for next year and how there’s some similarities to this year. Just in terms of activity weighting, this might be too granular, but relative to the high 180s exit rate after a pretty flush Q3 here. Can you maybe directionally talk about the sequential quarter-over-quarter trajectory from Q4 into Q1?
Lee Tillman: Well, I think you probably can be pretty well informed just by looking at what we have done in the past. If you go back and you kind of look at how we have trended, even from ’22 to ’23, that’s probably a good indicator. I know Ensign may have muddied the waters a little bit, this year, early in the year. But if you get down to the underlying legacy business, That profile, where we come in probably a little bit lighter, like I said, if you just look at 2023, we’re at 186,000, 189,000. Now we’re at 198,000 probably trending toward the high 180,000 in the fourth quarter. That kind of profile, because of the way that we laid our capital, directionally, that’s what you should expect to see in 2024. And again, we’ll give a lot more color and granularity on that in February, but that shape and that concentration of capital in the first half, that’s going to feel very familiar relative to this year.
Mike Henderson: Okay. But the only thing I’d add to that, Lee. But if you look back to this time last year, fourth quarter last year. We brought 26 wells to sales. This quarter sorry, fourth quarter last year we brought ’22. We’re getting the quarters mixed up. This time last year, we brought 22 wells to sales. This quarter, we’re projecting ‘26, so there’s a playbook there that we’ve tried and tested it works well. Just really building on these comments there.
Phillips Johnston : Okay, great. And then just one more follow up on EG, I guess. I think in the past you guys have talked about sort of an 8% to 10% natural PDP decline rate there, so I wanted to check to see if that’s still a good number. And then, obviously you’re still evaluating the two infill wells, but if you were to drill those, how might they impact your production trajectory in EG just over the next couple of years? I guess the question is will those wells more than offset those declines and they keep production relatively flat or just offset some of the declines?
Lee Tillman: Okay. First of all, your, your 10% decline number is in the right zip code. In terms of thinking about our EG gas production there, for sure. With respect to the info wells, obviously we are — we’ve talked about up to two wells. Even if we get to the two well program, what we’re talking about is partially mitigating the decline. And of course, those wells wouldn’t even be coming online until 2025. But the beauty of those wells, they’re very high value molecules for us, because of our alignment, again, across the value chain from the Alba PSC, all the way through the LNG plant. Those are going to be extremely valuable equity molecules. So if I accept the fact that we’re — we won’t obviously offset all of the decline, but if you look at it through a financial lens and being able to extend the financial performance of the con — of the integrated asset, those wells are really going to help us there.
