Ovintiv Inc. (NYSE:OVV) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Corey Code: Yes, I’ll start. Greg can chime in here, too. But we’re a little over 1/3 locked in pricing for our capital program this year. It’s a little higher than that on rigs and spreads and pipe. So that kind of gives you a sense for if we do see some deflation through the year, we would see some of that flow through, although it’s probably more of a back half feature, just knowing how the first 2 months of things have been priced. And the — maybe turn it over to Greg to add anything you want to there.

Greg Givens: Yes. I think the first thing to point out is we have all of the rigs and crews we need to execute on the program currently working for us today, and we’re going to be using those throughout the year. I think as you compare the different plays, we’re going to be open to some movement in the back half of the year if that does occur. But the most important thing for us is to focus on efficiency and getting most out of the crews and the rigs that we have. So we feel pretty good about where that’s headed, and we’ll be able to move capital if we need to in response to lower — or lower service costs of 1 basin versus another.

Operator: Your next question comes from Roger Read at Wells Fargo.

Roger Read : I just would like to ask, Canada with the LNG expansions coming on the West Coast, how that might have an impact on what you’re doing up in the area? And any thoughts on timing or capital allocation or something like that?

Brendan McCracken: Yes. Roger, appreciate the question. So the Canadian LNG project continues to progress towards a mid-decade startup. That’s an additional 2.1 Bcf a day of takeaway. There’s the potential for more projects to FID to add to that in the back half of the decade here. So we’re watching that closely. As you’ve heard us remark in prior calls, we do think the next logical step of price diversification would be to get some LNG exposure in the portfolio. So that’s something we continue to evaluate and I think my earlier comments were that nothing particularly imminent on that, but it is definitely something we continue to monitor and look at actively. Remember that the way we’ve set up our Western Canadian gas price exposure here is we essentially have very minimal AECO exposure all the way through 2025.

And so that’s a combination of our physical transport into the West Coast and into the Midwest and into Ontario as well as some basis hedges that we’ve got in place. So we really are well insulated and basically have a NYMEX exposed gas portfolio here through the mid-decade when those LNG projects should begin to turn on in Canada and help enhance the sort of structural fundamentals of the AECO market.

Roger Read : That’s helpful. And then I just wanted to come back to some of the comments earlier about decline rates in the Anadarko basin kind of leveling out here. Can you provide us a company-wide first year decline rate indicator?

Brendan McCracken: Yes. We’re in the kind of 30% to 35% total corporate decline.

Roger Read : Okay. So not much different than what you’re seeing in the Anadarko.

Brendan McCracken: The Anadarko is shallowed out below that. So it’s — the Anadarko is the shallower of the portfolio today. Yes. Sorry, I meant like what you saw in ’21, yes, it’s declined out as you said, flat in that.

Operator: Your next question comes from Umang Choudhary at Goldman Sachs.