Northern Oil and Gas, Inc. (NYSE:NOG) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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And I think we’ll spend a lot of time with our board and our advisors to really go through. Because ultimately, I think certain things come in and out of vogue from special dividends to dividends to buybacks and they tend to oftentimes reach a fever pitch and we’ve really tried to issue that and think really long-term. Because when oil was a $100 last year, a special dividend sounded like an awesome plant until prices pull back and then those special dividends go down. And you may have foregone other opportunities that might have created more value for the long-term. And so, we really try to be very, very careful and methodical about this. That’s why we’ve really stuck to a base dividend. We do believe we have a path to grow it over time, as well as to leave enough meat on the bone and enough excess cash flow to allocate it to things that are going to drive that dividend growth in a solid fashion over that long term period.

John Abbott: Yep. It does. And then, as a broader question, more on production, you had – it looks like you had a beat here from the Bakken. Also, if we sort of look back earlier during the week, there was another operator that said relatively strong performance out of Bakken. There was some prepared remarks on productivity in the Bakken. But could you provide any more color on how you see productivity trends sort of in the Bakken?

Nick O’Grady: Broadly speaking, what I would tell you is that what I’ve been impressed at when I get shown the raw data and I’d rather answer most of this question. Is that stuff we would have viewed as Tier 2, three or four years ago is performing about as well as Tier 1 stuff now. And so, the one thing about the Bakken is a higher cost basin, say it, than the Permian, it has a higher breakeven. It’s also a lot more consistent. And because the activity has been relatively muted, there have been about 50 rigs consistently for the past couple of years. You’ve seen a lot of discipline to that development. You don’t see the wild variations, you see the best of the best in the Permian, and you see the worst of the worst. It’s a much more consistent both dolomitic rock that is more consistent as well as consistent behavior from the operators.

I don’t know you — and I would say, John, honestly, we saw better than expected productivity in all three of our basins including the Marcellus. I mean, the declines in the Marcellus have been notably better than we would have expected. I don’t know if you want to add to that.

Adam Dirlam: Yes, that’s right. With the place completions and operations, we have seen some improvement where you used to take Tier 2, Tier 3 was uneconomic. Now we view it as Tier 1 in some cases. Obviously, operators are trying longer laterals, so laterals that’s helping on the production as well. And then part of it for us, again, as going back to the active management, we focus on areas that are highly productive within the core. So that’s kind of how we manage the business.

John Abbott: Very helpful. Thank you for taking our questions.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Charles Meade with Johnson Rice. Please proceed with your question.

Charles Meade: Morning, Nick, Ed, and Chad and Adam in the whole NOG team there. Nick, you’ve made a couple of comments, I guess, in the Q&A section about the importance of operators. And I think you made a comment or two about the importance of having operators that have scale. For the Mascot project, talking with that to investors, what is your — what’s the message or what’s the context you give to people when they say Permian and Deep Rock, well, I’ve never heard of them?

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