Floyd C. Wilson
Analyst · SunTrust
Thanks, and good morning, everyone. I'm a little hoarse today, sorry. This conference call contains forward-looking statements. For a detailed description of our disclaimer, see our earnings release issued yesterday afternoon. First quarter results were solid despite some weather-related downtime and associated drilling completion delays experienced in the Williston Basin. First quarter '14 production was above the high end of guidance. This production -- our production guidance for the second quarter represents 20% quarter-over-quarter pro forma growth and takes into account the sale of our Woodbine assets. We expect to close that sale of about $450 million within the next day or 2. And as we've reported before, we are entirely comfortable with our liquidity position. We continue to evaluate all our remaining noncore properties for future divestment. A lot of action going on at the company. Company-wide, we have 22 operated wells being completed or waiting on completion at this time. We're operating 8 rigs, 4 in the Williston, 3 at El Halcón and 1 in the TMS. We're adding a second rig in the TMS this month. And rig count in the TMS could easily double by early 2015 as we build a growth ramp there. Current plans call for spending roughly the same amount on drilling and completion CapEx in 2015 as in '14, about $1 billion. Up in the Williston Basin, production growth was fantastic, 73% quarter-over-quarter. We're currently producing about 25,000 barrels a day. That's -- 73% with first quarter '14 versus first quarter '13, 7% versus first quarter '14, as far as our guidance. Activity in the Williston Basin is back to normal after a very harsh winter. We generally were able to manage our way through this with a few delays, but not as nearly as bad as it could have been. We continue to make progress towards realizing efficiencies associated with pad drilling simultaneous operations and completion modifications. We are on track for a 5% or more decrease in completed well costs by year-end 2014 up in the Bakken and Three Forks drilling program. More importantly, though, average IP 30-day rates and the EUR estimates continued to increase. At the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, we have a 10% improvement in average IP rate, first quarter versus fourth quarter of '13. 30% improvement in average 30-day rate, which is a great number, first quarter versus fourth quarter '13. And on average, all Halcón-operated Bakken wells online in the Fort Berthold area completed via slickwater frac continued to outperform the 801 MBoe average type curve that we put out a few months ago. Testing is underway to determine if the use of slickwater fracs on Three Forks wells in the Fort Berthold may yield similar results, but initially, we're thinking that our hybrid fracs will work best in the Three Forks. We're in the process of putting 6 new wells online that were drilled from a single pad and spaced 660 feet apart. The IP rate for 1 of those 6 wells was 4,225 Boe per day. That's a new company record. Up in Williams County, we had some wells we drilled last year, finished up drilling early in the quarter. We completed 7 wells up there using slickwater fracs during the quarter and we -- those wells are outperforming the 477 MBoe type curve for that area. Keep in mind, we have a very large development inventory in Williams County although we don't intend to run any rigs there for the balance of this year. Downspacing tests continued to yield positive results, and we're watching our, of course, our own results and our peers' results all around the field, all around the basin. We're currently in various stages of downspacing tests on 16 pads. This is 50 wells in the Fort Berthold area. And results are expected from several of those this quarter. Bottom line results in the Williston Basin continue to improve from their already excellent position. The El Halcón in East Texas production growth is almost exponential. It grew 843% versus the first quarter of '13. Sequential growth was very strong as well. Currently, we're producing over 10,000 barrel -- Boe per day, nearly 50% more than our first quarter average. While results continue to improve, average IP rates improved over 10%, average 30-day rates improved 15%. We continue to make progress towards identifying the optimal well design. Keep in mind, we've only drilled -- we only have on production 50 or 60 wells. It's early stage in a play of this nature. So testing is underway on a number of completion design variations to reduce cost and increase performance. These include increasing stage length while delivering the same amount of proppant per lateral foot via tighter perf cluster spacing, increasing the percentage of resin-coated sand relative to total proppant, using different components within the frac fluid and testing different frac assemblies. Also, several artificial lift modifications are being evaluated as we continue to work to find the most economic formula overall. We're also working on trying to define that point of diminishing returns in terms of lateral length. Not quite there yet. We continue to feel that the longer lateral lengths are yielding the better results. We expect well costs to decrease as we continue to transition to full-scale pad drilling. That's going on this year with a couple of our rigs. Another rig will still be drilling a single well test here and there. Based on results from step out wells drilled to the south of our initial position in Northwest Brazos, combined with results from other operators, our entire acreage position is being de-risked, and we've declared it commercial. In the TMS, we've added a few acres here and there. We now have over 316,000 net acres in the play. We're off to a solid start, drilled our first TMS well in Wilkinson County, Mississippi, a bit ahead of schedule and in about 39 days. It was a 21,171-foot TD with a 7,751-foot lateral. Completion operations are currently underway. We're confident we can reduce the drilling days by year end by 15% to 20%. We're drilling our second well now, the Black Stone minerals well, and we'll move in the second rig within 10 days or so. We continue to evaluate joint venture or financing options for the TMS. This is 100% about balance sheet management and future rig count growth opportunities as we and a few others guide this play into its place as a-- one of the premier large-scale crude oil-based resource plays in the United States. Our excitement for the TMS continues to build. Mark Mize can -- will now go over our financial results for the quarter.