James Volker
Analyst · JP Morgan
Thanks, John. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for your interest in Whiting Petroleum Second Quarter 2011 Conference Call. We've shortened our presentation in terms of the slides. We're going to move quickly through our comments and slides, and we look forward to answering your questions. Calling your attention to Slide 3. In terms of revenue, the $481 million and discretionary cash flow of $313 million Q2 2011 was a record quarter for Whiting. Further, after 3 weeks of mostly dry weather in July, we've made great progress returning wells to production and frac-ing new wells. In the Williston Basin, we reached a new operated production record of 58,000 gross and 31,161 BOEs a day on July 19. Our Sanish field is coming back strong after first half 2011 inclement weather, reaching 22,817 BOEs a day net on July 19, 2011. We currently have 2 full time dedicated Halliburton frac crews, and one half time Baker frac crew working in the Williston Basin. We believe they're capable of frac-ing 18 to 20 wells per month between now and year end 2011. Therefore, we expect to reduce our 44 well inventory of operated wells waiting on completion to 25 or less by November 30. Based on our current drilling rig count of 17 rigs working in the Williston Basin, 20 to 25 wells being prepared for completion, represents a typical inventory. We have 11 service units running in the Sanish field, and are placing back into production wells that were shut in during the inclement weather due to muddy conditions. As of July 15, 2011, we had 27 wells waiting for a service unit. Consequently, we expect production to rise significantly in July through September because we expect this inventory to be eliminated by September 30, 2011. Our 2 recent discoveries at Redtail and Hidden Bench, our new wells at Sanish and Lewis & Clark, and our encouraging results at Big Stick demonstrate our strategy and ability to develop new oil play areas for future multi-rig development, while successfully executing on our existing large-scale resource plays. These results caused us to increase our capital budget to $1.6 billion from $1.35 billion. On Slide 4, you'll note that the Rocky Mountains, Permian and Mid Continent contributed 91% of our second quarter production of 64,120 BOEs per day. Calling your attention to Slide 5, our market cap is $7.2 billion. Of our $1.06 billion long-term debt, $600 million is in 2 staggered maturity senior sub issues, the first coming due in 2014 in the amount of $250 million, paying 7%. And the second, in the amount of $350 million, paying 6.5% due in 2018. Shares of common stock outstanding now total $117.4 million shares. You may recall our 2-for-1 stock split on February 22, 2011. Our decision to split our stock reflects our confidence in our long-term growth strategies and business opportunities. On Slide 6, you can see the breakdown of our new 2011 capital budget of $1.6 billion, which is up from $1.35 billion. Of this $250 million increase, we expect to invest approximately $90 million in additional land acquisitions, bringing the land total to $200 million. We expect to invest the remaining $160 million in drilling and facilities, and that would be split approximately 2/3 to drilling and 1/3 to facilities. The increased budget is expected to be funded through internal cash flow, and temporarily by bank borrowings from our line of credit, only temporarily because these wells, as most of our additional drilling is proving to be, pay out in 1 year or less. On Slide 7, we show you our planned 2011 capital expenditure per project, as well as the growth in net wells that we plan to drill at each prospect. For your convenience, this slide shows the total CapEx by region for the new and the old budget, so you can easily see where CapEx has been increased. New plays receiving a portion of our increased capital budget in 2011 include the Hidden Bench prospect in McKenzie County, North Dakota with 18 additional wells; the Cassandra prospect in Williams County, North Dakota with 6 more wells; the Starbuck prospect in Richland County, Montana with 5 additional wells; and our Redtail Niobrara prospect in Weld County, Colorado, with 4 more wells. On Slide 8, I'd like to point out that in 2010, the combination of acreage and non-proved CapEx totaled 41% per the pie chart on the left. In 2011, the same 2 categories have increased to a total of 63%. Consequently, in 2011, we're investing an additional $607 million and a greater portion of our budget into finding new reserves. Slide 9 shows our acreage position in the Bakken/Three Forks Hydrocarbon System at the Williston Basin. The first thing I'd like to point out is that our Land Department has continued to be very successful. They've increased our core acreage position in the Bakken/Three Forks Hydrocarbon System of the Williston Basin by over 76,000 net acres to a total of over 680,000 net acres. Further, our average acreage cost for our entire Williston basin acreage is currently $419 per net acre. Highlighting, done here in green, recent exploration results in the Williston Basin is the Arnegard 21-26 discovery well at our Hidden Bench prospect. This well was completed flowing 3,092 BOEs per day from an 8,913-foot lateral in the Bakken formation. The well, which was drilled to a vertical depth of approximately 11,490 feet was fracture stimulated in a total of 30 stages, all using sliding sleeves. We own 59,170 gross and 30,900 net acres in the Hidden Bench prospect, which is located in McKenzie County, North Dakota. We plan to drill or participate in the drilling of 26 wells on the prospect during 2011, and 11 of these will be operated. Also at Hidden Bench, we completed the Rovelstad 21-13H, flowing 2,450 BOEs per day. The well was fracture stimulated in a total of 30 stages, all using sliding sleeves. The Rovelstad well is located approximately 2 miles northeast of the Arnegard well. Slide 10 shows the reference points 1 through 9 for our cross section on the next slide. Please make note of them. Moving to Slide 11, here's the cross-section of our core properties in the Williston Basin. Numbers 1 through 6 represent what we refer to as the Lewis & Clark Greater Prospect area. Our in-house core analysis has permitted us to locate the sweet spot in each prospective interval. Note that the Sanish sand is approximately 15 to 20 feet thick at Pronghorn at location #1 and thins out to about 2 feet at Beaver Creek, that's #5. Having a thick Sanish sand section is a plus. We completed the Hecker 21-18TFH well in the Sanish sand at an initial flow rate of 3,612 BOEs per day. However, it is not necessary to have Sanish sand interval. We completed both the Federal 32-4TFH discovery well and the recent Clemens 43-9TFH (sic) [Clemens 34-9TFH] in the underlying Three Forks formation with IPs of 1,970 and 2,108 BOEs per day, respectively. I'd like to slow down here to emphasize our confidence in the Greater Lewis & Clark well results by reviewing with you by moving from A to A prime, our well results. Starting at point #1 on that Pronghorn side of this cross section, I'd like to remind you that the Kubas tested 1,953 BOEs a day; the Froehlich, 2,090; the Hecker, 3,612; the Richard, 1028; the Obergard [ph], 1,190, so that these wells have averaged 1,974 BOEs per day IP on a 24-hour test. Moving to Big Stick, the Teddy 44-30 IP-ed at 1,873 BOEs per day. At Elkhorn Ranch in Beaver Creek south, we feel this new Clement 44-39 well, which IP-ed at 2,108, has done a great job of de-risking those areas. Moving to Beaver Creek, #5, the Federal 32-4, IP-ed at 1,970 BOEs per day. And at Hidden Bench, the new Arnegard and Rovelstad wells, of 3,092 and 2,450, certainly show great results. So if as a fault of ours, we have not emphasized that correctly or if someone, in my opinion, doesn't get it, that these wells are excellent, and the results are great, we'll try to do a better job in forthcoming news releases to get that point across. Because certainly, our confidence is high, and we feel we have de-risked over 60% of our acreage across Lewis & Clark. On Slide 12, I'd like to highlight the completion of the Clemens 34-9 in the Three Forks formation, producing 2,108 BOEs per day. The Clemens well was drilled in the north central portion of the Lewis & Clark prospect in Billings County, North Dakota. This fracture was stimulated in a total of 30 stages. It's new producer was drilled approximately 5 miles east of the federal 32-4TFH discovery well, which I mentioned was completed flowing 1,970 BOEs per day. Also at Lewis & Clark, in our Pronghorn area, Whiting completed the Richard 21-15TFH in the Sanish sand, flowing 1,028 BOEs per day. The Richard, which was drilled on the southeast side of the prospect from Stark County, North Dakota, was fracture stimulated with 30 stages, all with sliding sleeves. We own over 387,000 gross and 254,000 net acres in the Lewis & Clark prospect, which is more than 3.5x larger than our Sanish field. At Lewis & Clark, Whiting has controlling interest in 164 1,280-acre spacing units, with an average working interest of 64%. Based on production to date at Lewis & Clark, it appears that these wells have relatively shallow decline rate. Therefore, we continue to believe that our wells at Lewis & Clark will have EURs in the 300,000 to 500,000 BOE range. Whiting's net production from the Lewis & Clark prospect averaged 2,640 BOEs per day in the second quarter of 2011, up 93% from the 1,370 BOEs per day average in the first quarter of 2011. As of July 15, there were 9 wells being completed or awaiting completion and 6 wells being drilled. We currently have 6 drilling rigs operating in this project, and we expect to average 8 rigs working from September through December. On Slide 13, is an example of the flat production profile of our Lewis & Clark wells. This slide shows the production performance of our 40 -- of our Federal 32-4H discovery well at Lewis & Clark. This well produced a total of over 66,000 BOEs during the first 6 months of production, and had cumulative production through July 15 of over 137,000 BOEs. That's a great well in anybody's book. Slide 14, you can see we continue to generate great results in the Sanish field. We've highlighted several wells for you on this map. The Nesheim 11-24XH was completed flowing 3,752 BOEs per day from the middle Bakken. The well was fracture stimulated in a total of 30 stages, all using sliding sleeve technology. We completed the Brookbank State 41-16XH, flowing 2,835 BOEs per day from the middle Bakken. This cross unit well was fracture stimulated in a total of 21 stages, all using the plug-and-perf method. We use plug and perf on the harder rock in this area to compare with sliding sleeves, and saw no difference in the results except for the higher cost and longer timeframe required to complete the job. We recently completed our second wing well at Sanish. This was the Oppeboen 14-5WH, and it was completed flowing 2,294 BOEs per day. The well's 6,100-foot lateral was fracture stimulated in a total of 22 stages, all using sliding sleeves. Whiting has a total of up to 81 potential wing well locations in the Sanish field. The wing well is normally a well drilled within a typical east-west trending 1,280-acre unit near the north or south lease line, with an approximate 6,000- to 7,000-foot lateral. We also saw strong results from the Three Forks well in the Sanish field, the Vangen 11-3TFH was tested, flowing 1,338 BOEs from the Three Forks Formation. On Slide 15, we've mapped how we are planning the ultimate development of Sanish field. This incorporates 3 Bakken and 3 Three Forks wells per spacing unit to arrive at the total 469 planned operated wells. Including non-operated wells, we estimate that 261 wells remain to be drilled in the Sanish field as of July 15, 2011. So we have a 2.5 year inventory of Sanish drilling. Slide 16 is one of our favorite slides. Whiting continues to lead the pack in terms of cumulative production during the first 6 months from all Bakken wells drilled in North Dakota since January 2009. For anyone with a sample of over 10 wells, Whiting leads the pack by 15,000 to 70,000 BOEs in the first 6 months. This is why I believe these results designate Whiting's employees as the premier Bakken operator. On Slide 17, please note the 17-mile oil line connecting the Sanish field to the Enbridge pipeline at Stanley, North Dakota is currently transporting approximately 33,000 barrels per day or about 85% of our gross operated oil production in the Sanish field area. We're currently saving approximately $2 per barrel in transportation costs versus transporting it by truck. In addition, please note the Savage Companies recently reported they plan to build a new rail facility that's expected to add 90,000 barrels of takeaway capacity by the second quarter of 2012. This brings our estimate to a total takeaway capacity from the Williston Basin to more than 1.1 million barrels per day by 2013. Slide 18 shows the exceptional results we are producing at Sanish and Lewis & Clark as proven by our average IPs and 30, 60 and 90-day rates for our Sanish Bakken wells, Sanish Three Forks wells and Lewis & Clark Three Forks wells in 2011. With nearly 260 wells in our 2011 drilling budget, we've elected to go to this format, and try to get away from reporting results on every single well. But we hope we've been detailed enough in the press release to show you the great results we've been producing recently. Now, I'd like to discuss our other exploration successes outside of the Bakken. And to do that, I'd like to introduce Jim Brown, our President and Chief Operating Officer.