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

Brendan McCracken: Yes, Jeoff, appreciate the question, and I love your take on it. I think what we’ll do, as we set ’24 is we’ll run those three gates on where does it make sense from a cash flow per share impact, what’s the world asking for in terms of barrels and BTUs. And then what do we see as the execution risk? And sitting here today, I think that maintenance level continues to feel like the right answer to those. But obviously, we’ll get a chance to look at that through the back half of the year. But that will be our starting point on that decision. And then the other piece that we’ll factor into it is just the level loading. We’ve worked really hard to create a level loaded program this year. We think that’s benefiting our teams greatly.

And so we want to be preserving that as we kind of go-forward into 2024 and setting up for a consistent level loaded program across the assets full year ’24. So those will be the things that we weigh as we work our way through this, and then we’ll be looking to optimize the returns, both return on invested capital and the return of cash to shareholders.

Jeoffrey Lambujon: Okay, great. And then my second one is just a follow-up on the Uinta, just given we’re about to see some additional contribution from that asset here in the second half, as you alluded to. I wanted to just ask simply what you need to see to allocate more capital there. I know you’ve been talking about the productivity comparisons. You spoke to the infrastructure earlier, kind of making room for that, if that’s ultimately where you decide to go. And I think you’ve spoken to some depth on the cost side of the equation in the past, but just wanted to get a refresh there on how you’re thinking about competitiveness of that asset just going into next year versus the balance of the portfolio?

Brendan McCracken: Yes, you bet. And so right now, the program we’ve got through the rest of ’23 here is absolutely return competitive with the rest of our portfolio. It sits right there on the on the same level of returns that we are seeing in the other assets. So that’s important, first of all, because otherwise, we wouldn’t put capital there. And then as far as trajectory from here, I think 2 rigs is going to really see a big ramp in volumes there. So that feels like the right level to be thinking about as we head into 2024, and we will just kind of watch and see the performance as we go through the year.

Jeoffrey Lambujon: Perfect. That’s all.

Brendan McCracken: Yes. Thank you, Jeoff.

Operator: At this time, we have completed the question-and-answer session, and I will turn the call back to Mr. Verhaest. Actually, I do apologize. We’ve one question left in the queue from Scott Gruber at Citigroup. Please go ahead, Mr. Gruber.

Scott Gruber: Yes. Thanks for squeezing me in. Just a couple of follow-up questions. What level of overall cost inflation would align with the midpoint of the ’24 guide just kind of ballpark.

Brendan McCracken: Yes. Hey, Scott. Yes, glad we got you there, I apologize for any confusion. Yes, so really, that midpoint of that guidance range would be sort of the deflation trajectory that we are seeing currently. So as we’ve kind of reviewed service pricing. Most recently, we’ve seen a little bit of reductions on some of the cost categories like diesel and steel. We’ve seen the green shoots of reductions on other categories like rigs and spreads. And so it’s basically including what we see today. And like I said, we’ll have to watch and see how things unfold if more deflation materializes as we go through the back half of the year.

Scott Gruber: Okay. Any way to quantify that? Is it kind of a mid single-digit type number? Is it trending towards double-digit [indiscernible]?