John Crum
Analyst · SunTrust
Thanks, Al. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us today. I’ve been looking forward to this call for a while now. The third quarter of 2013 was a very exciting one for all of us here in Midstates. Most importantly, we hit the significant milestone of exceeding $100 million in adjusted EBITDA. We continue to see strong production growth and lower unit cost and expenses, allowing us to comfortably meet production and cost guidance targets for the quarter. Drilling and completion activity reached record levels in the quarter. We spud 39 wells and brought 40 new wells online and at the end of the quarter with 10 active rigs drilling under contracts. Our Mississippi Lime program is clearly delivering on the promise we envisioned when we acquired the asset just one year ago. The recently acquired Anadarko Basin assets are now providing us with additional low risk proven drilling targets, primarily in the Cleveland sands as well as upside in the numerous pay intervals present in the Anadarko Basin. Our Gulf Coast program continues to provide its exposure to high value, oily production targets to round out our portfolio. Production growth remains our focus and we’re pleased to report today’s production was over 32,000 BOEs per day, up 385% in our short 19 month public life. We are especially proud of the progress we made in the Mississippi Lime acquisition, closed just over one year ago on October 01, 2012. At closing, those properties were making 7,200 BOEs per day and just one year we have those same assets producing over 17,000 barrels equivalent per day. This strong year-over-year growth demonstrates our ability to execute. We expect to execute similarly on our newly acquired Anadarko Basin assets. Overall, the company averaged 28,464 barrels per day in the third quarter from our diversified three state asset base. In spite of the significant weather related downtime we had earlier this year, we expect to average at least 24,000 barrels equivalent for 2013, up 140% year-on-year. We remain firmly focused on efficient execution of our development plans across our asset base to drive further growth. During the quarter, our Mississippian Lime and Hunt production grew to 14,364 barrels equivalent per day, up almost 38% from the second quarter. This growth was driven by an active five rig drilling program in the Mississippian Lime where we have been concentrating on our most prolific acreage. We believe drilling results continue to support the fact that our acreage position is among the best in the play. We now have 115 Mississippian wells have been on production more than 30 days, with an average 30 day initial production rate of 570 BOEs per day. During the quarter, we invested $105 million and spud 22 operated wells and completed 29 operated wells. Given the issues we faced earlier this year with snow and thunderstorms, a key focus was to increase the reliability of our power grid. During the quarter, we continue to transition our rental generation fleet from diesel to natural gas, with 80% of our generated electricity now coming from low cost natural gas generators. By the end of the year, we expect to bring in five megawatts of new power from the main grid through a new substation we recently built in cooperation with another operator. An additional five megawatts power will be available through the same substation this coming spring. We have also purchased a new five megawatt gas fire generator that will be in place by early ‘14. These additions will greatly reduce the stress on the local core ops for our growing demand and significantly reduce the need for rental generator sets. In addition to mitigate the downtime we experience from lightning strikes, we had a big program installing overhead lightening protection and tight matter grounding on all of our facility sites. As a result of these efforts, there have been no shutdowns due to lightning strikes since the program was implemented. Another area of improvement is with our produced water. To accommodate the increased water volumes, we have upgraded our saltwater disposal system with main trunk lines, looping and automation and level controls in our most active areas to avoid system redundancy. Those infrastructure improvements which are substantially complete, have helped to reduce lease operating cost in the third quarter and will allow us to experience less downtime in the future. If you’ve seen our release, operating cost per BOE in the Mississippian dropped to the low $6 range and believe this is a sustainable number going forward. Since assuming control with properties, Midstates is employing a number of different technologies in the Mississippian Lime, which includes 3D seismic, pad drilling and a variety of completion techniques to maximize the value of our asset base. We’re actively working the high resolution 3D seismic survey covering our core acreage position in Woods and Alfalfa counties and we’re already seeing the benefits of this data. Specifically, we are utilizing the data to high grade our inventory, in order to identify and test unique structural and stratigraphic features. We’re also using it to guide the placement of our horizontal wellbores in the most geologically attractive intervals within the Mississippian section and perhaps just as importantly avoiding potential trouble areas such as major faults. Pad drilling has also been a key driver in our success and gaining efficiency and providing drilling and completion cost savings. We are realizing cost savings of about $400,000 for well based on rig time and share facilities. We are typically building pad sites for six well capacity, but currently only drilling to four per pad in an effort to minimize the amount of time to bring the new wells on production. The timing from spud to first well of the four wells being brought on production to all of the wells being brought on production is roughly 100 days. As we’ve indicated in the past, this process will lead to some fluctuations in the number of wells brought online in any given quarter. We are continuing to examine different completion techniques in Mississippian Lime, trying to optimize fluids sand volumes frac sizes and – frac stages sizes and numbers. We’re also in the early stages of testing open hole completions and seeing some encouraging results. We hope to save as much as 40% of drilling and completion cost and reduce cycle times in a subset of our wells particularly those with good access to high permeability streaks and/or natural fracturing as well as on the other end, wells with high initial water rates. Potentially, this technique can make some of our more general areas more active. Those lower costs could also make down spacing more economical and result in higher ultimate coverage per section. For the fourth quarter, we plan drilling completions of approximately to 85 million in the Mississippian, completing those drilled in the third quarters and spudding 20 to 25 new wells. In the Anadarko Basin, we have made meaningful strides with our efforts to integrate and grow the asset. As we’ve discussed, the entire Panther staff is under a [indiscernible] and services agreement which terminates at the end of this month. We’re pleased to announce that 51 of Panther staff have agreed to continue their career in Midstates, ensuring that we retain their learnings from Panther’s successes over the past eight years. At the beginning of the third quarter, we had three operated rigs drilling primarily Cleveland sand targets. We added a fourth rig in July and a fifth rig in August to primarily focus on the Marmaton, Tonkawa and Cottage Grove prospects on our acreage. We invested 32 million and spud 16 operated wells and completed 10 operated wells during the quarter. Nine of those targets – nine of those wells targeted the Cleveland and one the Marmaton formation. We will continue to drill our low risk Cleveland sands inventory and are pleased with the early results. We’ve been experimenting with increasing sand – stage volumes for sand and fluid to see if we can improve performance. As of today, we have 11 Cleveland wells that have been on production more than 30 days since closing the acquisition and have gross 30 day initial production rate of 387 BOEs per day. We are encouraged by these results, as this flow rate is above the range of 270 BOEs to 360 BOEs per day that we had used in our type curve when we – that we utilized during the acquisition. Importantly, the best five of those wells averaged 629 BOEs per day, giving us reason to believe that as we continue to optimize our frac parameters, we can bring the overall average up. We’re just getting started with the evaluation of the potential upside that we see in the Marmaton, the Tonkawa and Cottage Grove acreage holdings. Our first Marmaton well tested 413 BOEs per day for its first 30 days. We will have more results to share from all of those targets during the fourth quarter. For the fourth quarter, we plan to spend $45 million, this encompasses completing the wells that are in progress at the end of the quarter and spudding 20 new wells about 12 of which will be Cleveland, the remainder a combination of Marmaton, Cottage Grove and Tonkawa targets. Moving on to the Gulf Coast, as previously discussed, we’re taking a measured approach to the development of our horizontal program in North Cowards Gully and South Bearhead Creek. We completed the Musser Davis 27 HC-1 at South Bearhead Creek on September 10, 2013 targeting the Lower Wilcox D. The well is currently producing at restricted rates of 483 BOEs per day, 85% liquids with a flowing tubing pressure 1,300 PSI after two months on production. We now have successful completions in both Lower Wilcox C and D intervals at South Bearhead Creek demonstrating the potential for stacked horizontal development in the field. The Wood 10H-1 sidetrack at North Cowards Gully was drilled in the third quarter and came online in early October. After one month of production, the well is currently producing at a restricted rate of 375 BOEs per day, 83% liquids, with a flowing tubing pressure of 2,300 PSI. In Pine Prairie, we’re continuing to work the recently acquired 3D data to high grade locations and build inventory for the future. The 3D results indicate good potential to extend the productive of the Wilcox on the east side of the dome [ph] and a similar fashion to our earlier successes on the west side. We’ve also filed an application to start injection for a pilot water flood project and anticipate proceeding in early 2014. In the Fleetwood area, we have completed our interpretation of the 200 square mile 3D survey and have identified numerous leads and prospects. We’re currently high grading the opportunities set identified and expect to drill the first prospect as early as Q1 of 2014 followed by additional tests as land and partnerships are finalized. For the fourth quarter, we have no rigs active in the Gulf Coast, but we will continue to evaluate our opportunity set and certainly expect a number of these projects will compete strongly for future capital. I’m pleased with our third quarter results and proud of the job our team has done to integrate another major acquisition and continue to grow our business. We will stay focused on execution to help drive growth. I’m confident that many of the initiatives mentioned above, will deliver the production growth, cost savings and attractive rates of return to create the most value for our shareholders. I’ll now turn the call over to Tom to provide you with some detailed information on our financial results.