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

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Nick O’Grady: Yes. I mean, I think But, I mean, I think we had 200 gross proposals in the first quarter. Yes. I mean, we had a record number, and sometimes these could be a fraction of a percent of an interest, so 40%, 50% in some cases. And what I tell you is it goes into the same meat grinder. It goes right through the engineering group. Every single one goes through the same process, whether it’s a tiny bit of money or a large amount of money net to us. And I’d say overall, the fact as we’ve span, you’re talking about a million gross acres now, plus or minus four-hour assets. So, you’re seeing tremendous amounts of activity even as commodity prices have weakened somewhat. But, if we’re doing our job, just like any portfolio manager, if you’re buying lands in the right places, you’re going to see consistent development.

And I think we’ve certainly seen that. We’ve continued to high grade and already high graded set of acres over the last several years. And so, I think we’ve seen activity that’s been at or above our expectations. The net interest in those can vary wildly from quarter-to-quarter, but I don’t know. Adam, you want to add anything else?

Adam Dirlam: No. I think you nailed it. I think it’s just a function of the effective management of the portfolio and your working interests are going to vary, and you’ve got your plan. And so you can hit the gas where it when you need to and you can bump the brakes on the ground game when you need to, and it’s all going to depend on what the organic asset is pulling and then the opportunity set that seeing and we just continue to manage it day-in and day-out.

Neal Dingmann: Perfect. Thanks, guys. Great work.

Adam Dirlam: Thanks, Neal.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of John Freeman with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

John Freeman: Thank you. First I want to touch on was just on the cost inflation side. I know you all had budgeting for kind of 7.5% cost inflation this year. And I know that last quarter, Nick, you mentioned that you’re really seeing more of the cost creep in the Bakken. We had some operators that were seeing some longer-term service contracts that were rolling off relative with Permian, which you had said was a lot steadier. And I guess, I’m just wondering if in the first quarter when as Adam mentioned, you all were like three quarters of your activity was in the Bakken. If that maybe skews a little bit of the cost inflation that you’re seeing relative to the rest of the year when it’s obviously a lot more balanced with Permian and Bakken especially the Mascot continues to ramp?

Nick O’Grady: I mean, maybe a touch, John, I’d say that, we have to think about how fragile the overall, let’s — I don’t want to get on my macro horse here, but the overall market in general is quite fragile right now, right? And I’m not talking about the oil market per se. I’m talking about the entire capital markets. And so — and you’ve had material selloffs to natural gas. You’ve had oil go through probably two hard selloffs in the last five months. But like anything else, this takes time. And so, you’re correct. We definitely have seen cost rising year-over-year and certainly even since, say last fall. As Adam pointed out, the biggest challenge last year was not necessarily cost, but actually logistics like getting items.

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