Paul Rady
Analyst · Capital One Securities
Thanks, Mike. I'd like to start by discussing the expansive cost savings efforts underway at Antero Resources, AR. Over the last year, we've been intensely focused on reducing the overall cost structure to make AR more competitive in a lower for longer commodity price environment. This process included a line-by-line review of every expense item throughout the company. Through this comprehensive review, we've identified the potential to remove $250 million from AR's overall cost structure in 2020 alone. As detailed on Slide 3 titled AR Cost Reduction Strategy Overview, the majority of these reductions will come from lower well costs and reduced lease operating expenses, or LOE, driven by the new flowback and produced water blending operations. Through these blending operations, optimized trucking logistics, drier completions and improved coordination during well turn in lines events, we expect to see $160 million of D&C CapEx savings and $60 million of LOE savings in 2020. Importantly, the vast majority of these savings can be achieved in-house and are under Antero's control. These savings allow AR to target a D&C CapEx budget of $1.15 billion to $1.2 billion in 2020 that is expected to generate 8% to 10% year-over-year net production growth. In addition, AR continues to focus on mitigating net marketing expense and has already entered into agreements to mitigate excess capacity this winter. These initiatives save approximately $15 million and AR remains active in evaluating opportunities to further reduce net marketing expenses with third-party midstream providers. Lastly, AR is targeting a 10% reduction in G&A or approximately $14 million of savings in 2020 from natural employee attrition and overall G&A reductions. Now let's move to Page 4 titled Marcellus Well Cost Reductions. Last quarter, AR announced a well cost savings initiative that targets 10% to 15% reduction in well cost on a per lateral foot basis or approximately $1.2 million to $1.7 million per well. The left-hand side of the page illustrates AR's January 2019 well costs at $970 per foot, that was assumed in AR's budget. Today, AR's well costs are $895 per foot, which equates to savings of nearly $1 million per well. Savings already achieved are substantially ahead of our previous second half 2020 target of $930 per foot. Our ability to achieve lower well cost ahead of schedule is primarily due to the acceleration of localized blending operations during the third quarter that resulted in reduced flowback water costs. The coordinated effort between AR and AM allowed us to quickly and successfully execute our blending program and deliver savings ahead of schedule. Before getting into the details of our new flowback and produced water blending operations, I want to briefly discuss our decision to idle the Antero Clearwater Facility. As you remember, we began construction on the facility in 2015 to become industry leaders in water recycling and to be at the forefront of environmentally responsible shale development. At the time, flowback water was not used in completions and there were industry-wide concerns regarding the long-term viability of injection wells in Appalachia. The decision to idle this facility was driven by its inability to operate at its intended specifications. As a result of idling the plant, we recorded a $457 million impairment of the facility. While we are disappointed in the outcome, we remain focused on developing new opportunities such as blending and other flowback and produced water initiatives that reduce the overall cost structure at AR. This in turn supports the sustainable development at AR that underpins the long-term growth at AM, particularly in a lower for longer commodity price environment. Slide 5 titled Antero Water Savings Performance shows the blending operations to date. Antero Midstream plays an integral role in providing blending operations for both flowback and produced water that drives CapEx and LOE savings at AR. As depicted by the yellow line on the chart, AR's all-in cost disposed of wastewater was in the $10 per barrel range during the first half of 2019. The downward trend in cost per barrel shown on this slide is driven primarily by an increase in blending volumes, which are depicted in the purple bars. These savings from blending combined with reduced trucking cost is expected to reduce AR's wastewater disposal cost by over $4.50 a barrel compared to the first quarter of 2019. While the EBITDA contribution from blending operations is not material to AM's overall portfolio, it is a critical business for AM supporting AR and driving down costs. Now let's move on to the discussion of our prime -- of our preliminary 2020 capital budget on Slide 6 titled 2020 Preliminary Capital Target. As depicted on the map on the right side of the page, in 2019, we constructed the backbone of our infrastructure into Tyler County, West Virginia, that supports AR's development over the next several years. Looking ahead to 2020, we have optimized our capital plan to focus on the highest rate of return locations at AR that are also in close proximity to existing gathering and water infrastructure. This allows us to target a capital budget of $375 million to $425 million in 2020 or a 40% reduction compared to the midpoint of the updated 2019 capital budget of $665 million to $685 million. Looking at our processing investments in the joint venture with MPLX, we have already invested a majority of the capital for Sherwood 12 and 13, which adds 400 million cubic feet a day of combined processing capacity in the fourth quarter of 2019. This increase in processing capacity at Sherwood along with 1 expected plant in the new Smithburg site in mid-2020 supports Antero's 2020 production growth without a significant amount of incremental processing capital investment. AM's capital flexibility in addition to its visibility into AR's development plan is a competitive advantage for AM. Before handing the call over to Mike, I want to briefly touch on AR's hedges on Slide 7 titled Industry-leading Natural Gas Hedge Position. During the third quarter, AR added to its hedge position for both gas and NGLs. On the gas side, we shifted 2022 hedges into calendar year 2021 to more closely align AR's hedge profile with its unutilized firm transportation expenses and modest growth profile. AR is now over 90% hedged on natural gas in 2020 at an average price of $2.87 per MMBtu and 89% hedged in calendar year 2021 at an average price of $2.80 per MMBtu, assuming approximately 8% to 10% annual growth in 2020, 10% growth in 2021. Based on strip pricing today, AR's hedge realizations more than offset its net marketing expense through calendar year 2021. On the NGL side, AR has been actively hedging and was able to take advantage of the global price spikes following the incidents in Saudi Arabia. As depicted on Slide 8 titled C3+ NGL Hedges capturing recent pricing strength, AR is currently 50% hedged on C3+ NGL volumes for the fourth quarter and 28% hedged in 2020. This includes a balanced mix of domestic hedges and international hedges for the volumes shipped to Europe and Asia out of Marcus Hook while AR's capital budget will be flexible based on commodity prices. This industry-leading hedge portfolio allows AR to have more consistent capital budgets that are less sensitive to drastic changes in response to commodity prices. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mike.