Eric Hambly: Yes. Thanks for the question. I’ll just give you a quick run through of our overall Vietnam business and how we think about it. We really like this Lac Da Vang project that we’re working on now. Just getting started. We’re going to spend $40 million net to us on the CapEx in development project for this year. And as Roger highlighted earlier, there’ll probably be somewhat close to double that in 2025 and 2026, first oil in 2026. It’s a nice development, 10,000 to 15,000 barrels net to us, but we would like to have a bigger business that’s more material there, and we’re fortunate to have excellent exploration prospects very close to our existing infrastructure that we’re building out for Lac Da Vang. We’re spending a little bit less on the exploration wells than you mentioned.
I think you might have switched the development cost with exploration costs. So our exploration well cost is kind of in the $30 million to $35 million net range, and they’re very sizable, very exciting prospects in the Cuu Long Basin. We haven’t drilled a dry hole. It’s very oily. It provides almost all the oil in Vietnam. And there may be some development synergies. One of the fields — one of the prospects for drilling in the Block 15105 is particularly close to our LDV development. So on success, the ability to bring that field online faster than otherwise is an advantage from making money perspective from a free cash flow generating perspective. And then the prospect in the 15.2 is very sizable, very material for us. And could have the potential that our overall business in Vietnam could be a 30,000 to 40,000 net BOE a day business, which will be a really great piece of business for us there and generate tremendous amounts of free cash flow going forward.
So we’re super excited about it and look forward to giving you an update on the results of those Vietnam wells in the second half of 2024.
Timothy Rezvan: Thank you very much.
Roger Jenkins: Thank you. Appreciate it.
Operator: Thank you.[Operator Instructions] Your next question is from Roger Read from Wells Fargo. Please ask your question.
Roger Jenkins: Good morning, Roger. Good to hear from you.
Roger Read: Thanks. Good to hear you all. Getting us started here with the E&P earnings season. Just — I think my question comes at you from kind of the capital allocation. It’s been danced around a little bit. But looking at the fact you’re an exploration company, you’ve stuck with exploration through all the environments, you are even in the case, I think it was Zephyrus buying into an existing discovery. So you step back, Roger, you look at your options here, acquisition, exploration, buyback your shares, how does all of that fit in when you’re doing the true evaluation here? Like which one looks the best, which one — how do you think about them competing over the course of, say, the next five years as you look out at your long-range program?
Roger Jenkins: Thanks for that question, Roger. I appreciate that. The way we think about it is you have to have some level of exploration spending if you’re an E&P company or if not, you’re just a peak company. And so we have raised that because we need to build a better portfolio for the long-term value of the company. When I think of sustainability, we have all the attributes of all the ESG sustainability. We ranked top in ISS, ranked number 1 by every ranker, lowest emissions, incredible focus and all that. But to me, sustainability is having that in an asset base that last for decades. As I mentioned on a prior call, our Board has seen a production forecast past 2050 with the assets that we own today. So we like to augment those assets with more oil-weighted exploration and not become a totally gas company because we have tees and tees of gas in the Montney.
So we feel that at a 10% level of CapEx, 8% to 10% level of CapEx, we can build a long-term lower risk exploration portfolio that doesn’t have — that evens out the risk profile for the year, which we just talked about here with the previous caller. So we have that. Our buyback of stock is very, very good allocation of capital as well. And we disclosed the framework that we’re quite serious about. And if you look at the actual data, it would within 1% or 2% of that execution on our first year. So we measure all that through and focus on free cash flow. So what we want to build and what we have between now and 2028 is — I’m looking at all the free cash flow every year from 2024 to 2029. We make $1 billion a year or more every year of free cash flow.
So we’re doing that with the assets we own then we can augment that with exploration last longer and longer and longer at that same oil weighting and still have all of our onshore assets there to back us up to last for decades and decades. We’re not going out of business at Murphy. We’re sustaining our company through the capital allocation process that we have. And along the way, we’re going to be able to buy a lot of stock. One of the key advantages of Murphy because we never issued equity since we went public in the 50s, we only have 154 million shares. So we can buy 5% or 6% of the company every year without any problem at all. So just a different animal. I’ll show all this business today about our incredible balance sheet and our shareholders today have $1.20 a share dividend, the same as 2016 with way less net debt.
So we’re protected not to lower our dividend anymore. That’s what we wanted to do, and we want to have the balance sheet in another cycle to pounce on M&A. And that’s how we look at it. From an M&A perspective in the Gulf, we did buy a very nice situation. It’s getting better, we believe, on subsurface. We occasionally look at prospects near our infrastructure, we could then flow those barrels to us. We don’t have that deal done. We’ll need to compete, but we’re the top operator in the Gulf, high-uptime in the Gulf, highest record in the Gulf. People want to flow to us. And that’s an opportunity for us to make an incredible high rate of return. And people want us in their project, even though we’re not opt to help along the way with our expertise.
