Ovintiv Inc. (NYSE:OVV) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Gregory Givens: Yes. It’s really just a lot of great work by the teams, blocking and tackling, reducing failure frequency. But we do see a little improvement with some of the new frac designs we are pumping seem to have less impact on the parent wells. But really, just a lot of things that the teams are looking at that are adding up to a nice little beat there on the base side. And this is something we are focused on in all of the areas, not just the Permian.

Phillips Johnston: Okay. And I’m guessing that’s also not factored into your second half of the year production guidance or the ’24 guidance, correct?

Brendan McCracken: Well, I think what we’ve factored in here now is the performance uptick we’ve seen on the existing PDP. And so where the upside is still just what further decline abatement can we do, but we have included the PDP impacts that we are realizing today in the forward guide.

Phillips Johnston: Okay. Okay. That makes sense. And then just maybe an update on LNG Canada Phase 1. I realize you guys aren’t a direct participant, but it’s obviously going to help pricing in the [technical difficulty]. I think as of the Montney Day in September, I think the project was over 60% complete with timing in first quarter ’25. Just wondering how the progress has been since then?

Brendan McCracken: Yes. I will get Corey to chime in because there have been some recent progress updates from the operators there, both on the pipe side and the LNG liquefaction side, and he might remember the percentages. They’re actually pretty high in terms of percent complete here now. But what I’d say about LNG generally is we continue to evaluate and are engaged in all of the West Coast LNG projects that are either under construction like Phase 1 or pre-FID like several others. We do think it makes sense to have some exposure to LNG for our portfolio time. We think that’s complementary to our existing price diversification strategy in the Montney. Couple kind of ground rules, if you will. I think, one, we are not interested in an equity stake.

So I think we can take that off the board. But we’ve shown we can demonstrate great success by developing egress out of the Montney and into the rest of North America. And I think the logical extension of that is also to have a piece of global exposure here. And so our team is hard at work across each of those projects to find the right commercial solution for us. But I don’t know, Corey, if you’ve got any of those project update numbers of top of your head there.

Corey Code: Yes, sure, Brendan. So Shell talked about this a little bit yesterday, but I think they’re reference point, certainly sounds more optimistic than it had in the past, even they’re talking about 75% complete on the midstream and more than 90% complete on the pipeline. So obviously, that’s coming soon and good updates from that standpoint.

Phillips Johnston: Okay. That sounds good. Thanks.

Brendan McCracken: Thanks, Phillips.

Operator: Your next question comes from Jeoffrey Lambujon at TPH & Co. Please go ahead.

Jeoffrey Lambujon: Good morning, everyone and thanks for taking my questions. My first one is another one on how you’re looking at forecasting for next year. If we get to a situation where the current forecast for the Permian particular prove conservative for 2024 with maybe the same CapEx range you’ve been talking about actually able to generate more production than what’s modeled today. How should we think about the overall outlook potentially changing. So I just want to get a sense for if we should think about reductions to that spending range, maybe with less capital, again, needed to still achieve greater than the 200 level on [indiscernible] you’ve spoken to or if it might be more like a steady range on CapEx, but with the potential for volumes sold closer to what we might see in Q4 here for a bit longer?