SilverBow Resources, Inc. (NYSE:SBOW) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Noel Parks: Great, thanks. And well, with Eagle Ford, of course, like with a development process, you’re always learning and gathering data. There’s Austin Chalk has had so many different lives across so many different, different basins over the years. So is there anything in particular, incrementally that you’re experiencing in Webb County has sort of brought to the table that clarify that you did have some decent potential in parts of central oil and Eastern extension. And could you ever give a shout out sort of what that might mean, in terms of how many locations you might have incrementally or just a portion of the overall acreage where the chalk might work? I guess, if you can talk about what characteristics make it look better in some places than others particularly?

Sean Woolverton: Yes. Really the fundamental change right from historical chalk development, both up in Giddings and through the Karnes, Austin chalk trend that saw quite a bit of activity through ’17, ’18, ’19 timeframe. What emerged with the Webb County chalk was development, not necessarily chasing fractured chalk but more porosity driven chalk. And so, when we really started to understand that better, and where we took that mindset and thought elsewhere, obviously, we identified in conjunction with SM play in northern Webb, the potential that it had. And that’s why we were patient and pursued the Chesapeake transaction because we’re really excited about the chalk there. But then, took that same model elsewhere. And it’s starting to replicate itself.

The chalk doesn’t have good porosity and doesn’t have enough thickness across the good portions of the basin. But we’ve found pockets where it does. So that’s kind of the difference in the models from historical to what we’re pursuing, I would say is less of a fractured play and more of a porosity, thickness driven play. So a little bit of conventional reservoir development using horizontal drilling and fracturing to unlock the resource. In terms of quantifying the inventory, obviously, Webb County is where we have a lot of it. We have a couple of 100 — probably 2500 — probably 125 gas chalk locations up top of my head and similar numbers in the Chesapeake if not a little bit higher. Across the other ones, we’re still in the process of kind of quantifying that.

So haven’t added that to our materials yet. Our footprint, they’re smaller than our Webb County, so it’s not going to be to those extent but we’re going to — it’s going to be additive to our inventory for sure.

Operator: And our next caller comes from Jeff Robertson with Water Tower Research. [Operator Instructions] And Jeff, with that, go ahead.

Jeff Robertson: Question on the Chesapeake assets. With the new wells that you highlighted that are being brought on, can you talk about the natural decline on that asset base when you fold it into SilverBow, and how that impacts the overall corporate natural decline rate?

Sean Woolverton: Yes. The Eagle Ford, Chesapeake had developed that asset base going back as far as, what, ’08, ’09 timeframe. So overall, that asset basis has a lower decline rate than SilverBow standalone. So we’re expecting that it’ll flatten our decline — the base decline on our combined asset here moving forward. So brought it down probably a couple of percent, high-20s, low-30s on a standalone basis down, the Chesapeake assets were probably in the mid-20s a little bit higher than that. So dropping it combined probably 1% or 2%.

Jeff Robertson: And then, if you think about co-developing the chalk in the Eagle Ford, in some of your areas, does that have any issues with respect to infrastructure that needs to be addressed?

Sean Woolverton: No, actually it’s a benefit, especially in our Webb County area, both on the SilverBow existing assets and then on the Chesapeake assets, as we’re able to leverage the existing Eagle Ford infrastructure and put the chalk into it. So most of those assets were put in place to capture peak Eagle Ford development and have declined off a little bit since the Eagle Ford has. So bringing on the chalk, we’re actually taking advantage of existing infrastructure.

Operator: We have another question from Noel Parks with Tuohy Brothers. Noel, go ahead.