Murphy Oil Corporation (NYSE:MUR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 4 of 10

Charles Meade: Got it. That’s all helpful detail. And then Roger, you guys had that dry hole down in Mexico that you already disclosed, but you’ve got a big block down there, and you’ve got a lot of other prospects down there. So can you tell us what you’ve found what you learned with this first well? And kind of give us kind of what — how it’s going to inform your future activities down there?

Roger Jenkins: Thanks for that question, Charles. Yes, it’s a disappointing well. It was a well that we have in the system. If you really look at the wells in my review, which is still ongoing. We’ve had some trouble getting the data out of the equipment there that we have. It’s a little bit slowed in our review at this time. But it’s really just not enough reservoir there was the issue and where would the reservoir be — there’s a key well being drilled by another operator to our north here this year. We also have our Cholula acreage that we can go back to our review at a later time. And so we’ll be watching that key well to the north and going through our learnings, not ready to move that off, but we have significant acreage.

We have many prospects in our company. We have that same acreage block 5 in the Gulf, the same acreage in Brazil, the same acreage in PortoGra Basin. So we have 4 areas of the same acreage that we have net across our business. We’re really only spending about $100 million a year on exploration, which includes seismic, the people that work on it and the drilling, and we’ll continue to do this. And these wells are really about seeking opportunities with better returns than what we have in our business. But as we disclosed today, multitude of opportunities to keep our offshore business flat well into ’27 and beyond, all documented, all known thousands of wells in our onshore business. So we can stay sustainable. And all the things I mentioned today about our future does not include one drop of oil from exploration success.

So it’s something we do unique that puts us well positioned in a differentiation to others. We’ll have plenty of stuff to do on our own outside of that as well.

Charles Meade: Well, thank you. Appreciate it.

Operator: Thank you. Next question, we have Leo Mariani with MKM.

Leo Mariani: I wanted to start off and just address the Eagle Ford a little bit here. I think if I was reading the slides right, I think you guys are forecasting that production is down maybe around 7% year-over-year. It looks like it’s also down a fair bit in the first quarter of 23% versus 4Q, but I know you guys disclosed some downtime there and just kind of some information about the timing of the wells. And then I guess if I’m reading this right, it looks like you are to have maybe a few more operated wells in ’23 versus 2022. So could you maybe just kind of talk through Eagle Forward in terms of why you’re seeing a decline there? I was kind of thought the plan was to try to hold that flat over the next handful of years.

Roger Jenkins: Actually, Leo, the plan — I appreciate that question. Actually, it plans to be 30,000 to 35,000 to maximize free cash flow in the Montney, same thing, trying to grow that asset to fill the plants while producing free cash flow. So free cash flow generation is the number 1 goal. But Eric’s going to address all your questions here right now.

Page 4 of 10