EOG Resources, Inc. (EOG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Yes. Good morning. This is Arun Jayaram from JPMorgan's E&P OFS and integrated role research team. Welcome to day 1 of our conference. Delighted to have EOG Resources. This is our 11th annual conference, and I'm delighted to say that EOG has been here all 11 years. Joining us today is Jeff Leitzell. He's the EVP and COO of EOG. He's a lifer. He spent your entire career at EOG, started off as a completions engineer, rising through the ranks spent some time in Midland, and he got promoted to COO in late 2023. Jeff, how are you?

I'm good.

Well, Jeff, I hate to start with the macro, but it's really, really important because at the end of the day, it really shapes how investors think about the investment in E&P stock. So give us a sense, I know that EOG spends a lot of time thinking about supply-demand balances. How do you survey the geopolitical risk supply disruptions? How are you thinking maybe about the near-term and medium-term outlook for crude oil?

Yes, it's a great question. Obviously, things are extremely dynamic right now with the disruptions that we've seen with the Iran conflict in -- what we really see is if you just kind of step back and you look at it from the 30,000-foot view is, over the last 4 months, we've had about 1.3 to 1.5 million billion with a B barrels of total capacity taken offline, which has obviously had a massive effect on the market. And so when you look at that and you really roll it all the way up, inventories, obviously, world inventories are extremely low at this point in time. So -- the other thing that we see when you tie all this together is, obviously, to get some flush production back on, we got to get the straight to Horus open back up. And -- what we really see is after a period like this is it's not all going to come back on at once. Probably you're looking at maybe about 50% coming back on in the first month. and really, in total, taking 3 to 4 months to get to probably 90% to 95% of the total capacity that was going through the straight back online. And then that additional kind of 5% to 10%, I think that's really a question mark. We don't know exactly how much damage has been done to infrastructure? What kind of difficulties are there going to be to bring wells back on and fields back on that maybe have been shut in. That's 1 thing that you got to take into context is a vast majority, if not all, is primarily conventional type reservoirs over there. So the majority of it's not on artificial lift, and you would need some kind of intervention for a lot of these wells to really be able to kind of kick the wells back off from that aspect. So major disruption and really what we think we've seen is we haven't really seen demand destruction yet. It's only been 4 months. We've really seen what we would call demand displacement really. And we think as soon as the barrels do come back online, you're going to see them very quickly soaked back up. We think China obviously is going to pick right back up. You're not going to see them from a recession standpoint, pull back at all. Obviously, they have GDP marker numbers that they want to hit, and they're going to focus on hitting that. And ultimately, we think that if you look at kind of the medium to, I would say, near to medium term, we see as if there's probably a floor on WTI of about $60. And really, I think that floor is going to be really created by the strategic petroleum reserve replacements that are going to be over there in the next 3 to 4 years. If you see prices start getting at or below $60. I think you're going to see the U.S. and Europe and China start refilling those SPRs. And then when you look at the top side of it, I mean, you're going to have volatility. You'll have higher prices, lower prices, but on average, over the next couple of years, I think you're probably looking at a high-end average of around $80 is what we're expecting. So a fairly robust market for the next handful of years based off this interruption.

Great. Jeff, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the U.S. supply situation. There's kind of an active investor debate whether U.S. oil production is nearing a plateau given Tier 1 inventory exhaustion and industry-wide productivity headwinds and -- where does EOG stand on the debate where U.S. supply can go from here?

We've tried to make a call on this before, and we probably were wrong. So what I would say is this, we've kind of fallen back and we've seen and you've seen it over the last 5 years, never count out unconventional industry, the technology and the innovation out there because -- just over the last 5 years, you've seen huge strides forward within the industry to be able to drive cost basis is much, much lower. Lateral lengths have extended immensely. The average lateral length used to be 1.5 miles to 2 miles and now operators are drilling 3, 4, 5-mile laterals. Efficiencies have gotten substantially better. And you can even see that on the service side where yes, there's less equipment out there, but it all tends to be much higher spec, better equipment out there. So ultimately, I think where we stand is -- the U.S. can it grow? Yes. I think it really -- you need to tell me what the price is going to be. If it's going to be $60 or $65 kind of mid-cycle, I would suspect the U.S. probably doesn't grow that much, flat to maybe just slight growth. But if you do have $85, $90 oil, the U.S. definitely can lean in and they may leak a little bit of capital efficiency, but they can grow.

Got it. let's talk a little bit about natural gas. EOG has been constructive on long-term natural gas fundamentals, LNG feedstock rising power demand, which have been positive dynamics -- how are you thinking about the 2026, 2027 supply-demand setup?

Yes. So on the gas side right now, obviously, from an inventory aspect, we're kind of at the 5-year high of levels right now. So inventories are fairly healthy. I think there's a handful of things that you've got to continue to watch. And obviously, we knew we're going to move the market. The first 1 is obviously continued expansion and build-out of LNG on the coast. That's obviously going to be a huge demand center. And as long as everything stays on pace there and there's continued investment in the coast, that's obviously going to be a major demand draw there. The second side of it is additional power gen demand, data centers, I mean from that aspect, you're starting to see it gain a little bit of steam as far as understanding what kind of capacities is. I think it's still the early innings there. But -- for instance, we just recently, I think in the last week, there was a data center that was announced out of the Permian, and that's going to take offline about 0.5 Bcf of gas, which just those kind of relief as I think, are really going to be good security in the market and help really stabilize that price over time. And then lastly, what I'd say is gas is always weather dependent, right? They're talking about a super El Nino this year. So obviously, potential for a really hot summer again. So we'll see what the kind of draws look like throughout summer. And then we'll get into winter, and we'll see what that really represents for how cold of a winner we really see across the U.S. And obviously, that's always the big needle mover in the near term on natural gas prices. But -- for the long term, extremely constructive on natural gas prices medium and long term, and we think we're outstandingly positioned to be able to take advantage of it with our Dorado asset down there in South Texas.

Let's shift gears, talk a little bit about capital allocation. Let's talk a little bit about M&A. One of the things that's unique about the EOG culture has been the organic growth dynamic, which has been since Forest Hoagland has been kind of CEO of the company back in the late 1990s. You have announced a couple of deals and Sino and in Eagle Ford bolt-on, what were unique about those kind of transactions.

Yes. So the 1 thing I'd say is, and I'm sure we'll get a chance to talk about it. Is that the core EOG, I mean, we truly are an explorer. We've been exploration since day 1. We're going to continue to be exploration, we still see a long runway here in the U.S. and international. So -- with that being said, we do obviously see value with having others acreage in our hands. So we have done some successful bolt-ons, offset of the Eagle Ford and other areas in the Utica. -- and has given us confidence that following up our organic exploration, we can lean in on some of these bolt-ons to really expand our acreage set and find value in that. And then even more so, I would say, deals like Yates and nCino, just with the great success that we've had through the integration process, the synergies that we've seen have really just beat all expectations. I think that's given us confidence to be able to do more very strategic M&A like that. And by that, I mean not M&A going into established basins where everybody understands exactly what the resource is, the prices have already been run up. We're talking about opportunities where maybe we're going in, and we have an exploration play, and we're able to take out another operator or a portion of an operator to be able to accumulate that acreage and finish putting our acreage footprint together. More of those greenfield kind of newer opportunities. I think that really fits well with the portfolio -- and those are some of the opportunities, I think you'll see us look into as we move forward in the future.

Let's talk about the capital allocation process, maybe 0. And on this year, multi-basin platform levered to a lot of the core plays in North America, you have leverage to oil gas NGLs, so a lot of portfolio balance -- you made some decisions to reallocate capital this year while keeping your budget flat at $6.5 billion. Could you talk a little bit about those moves that you made in the portfolio?

Yes, and we've talked about it quite a bit. Obviously, the first thing we do with capital allocation, we always focus on is capital discipline. That's the number 1 thing focus on. We want to make sure we're investing in the right project, the right asset at the right time to maximize cash flow and returns. And that's kind of bar none. That's what we focus on. The second thing is, in order for us to allocate capital to any of our assets, it has to meet our minimum economic threshold, which is it has to have a direct after-tax rate of return of 30% at $45 oil, $2.50 gas, which is bottom cycle pricing. So that's our minimum hurdle for an investment. If you don't reach that, you don't get capital. So that's a pretty easy hurdle marker to look for. And then next, once you actually do fall in line to actually acquire capital, -- at that point, we really look at where you are in the life cycle as a play. Are you early on in the play? How fast can we invest in it? If we invest too fast, we want to make sure that we're not leaking knowledge out of that play, and we're gaining everything and our learnings throughout that process. And that's 1 of the things we really take into account from a capital allocation standpoint. So -- and that's just 1 of the huge flexibilities with having a multi-basin portfolio, we were able to really flex that whenever the conflict started up. We said, okay, look, we've got a little bit of a depressed gas price. Let's move a little bit of capital out of our dry gas Dorado asset is fairly minimal, just dropping below 1 frac fleet. And we put a little bit of capital in the Utica to complete 10 more net wells and a little bit more in the Permian to complete 5 more net wells. And ultimately, what that did for the balance of the year was we increased our oil volumes by 2,000 barrels a day, and we increased our NGLs by 6,000 barrels a day. So -- those are the kind of things that it's great. If you're just a single basin player, you don't have that much optionality to be able to move around capital. But being a multi-basin multi-country and obviously, multi-molecule having oil combo and gas assets gives you a lot of flexibility to move that capital around and maximize free cash flows for the company.

Let's talk a little bit about kind of the exploration DNA of the company, can you talk a little bit about for the generalist in the audience a little bit about the culture of the operating model that has enabled your long-term exploration success.

Yes. That's -- as I said, that's something has always been core to EOG. We've always nurtured our exploration knowledge, all the way from the very get-go in the late 1990s when the company became independent. We took anybody that really had even good conventional exploration experience and made sure we passed along all that knowledge along to our younger staff. And then as we accumulated data over time and really honed in our unconventional understanding of these basins, make sure that we trickle at that out to our staff and continue to nurture it because we really knew that, that's going to be a big, big part of the company. And how we've actually structured it, as you talked about, is we are a decentralized organization. So we have 7 divisions out across the U.S., along with international operations -- and each 1 of those have their own strategic exploration group. They're looking within their regions and their assets for new exploration plays. And so we have lots of horsepower out there looking for the next thing. And really what they're looking for is things that aren't just additive to the portfolio, but ultimately we'll be kind of at the higher end of the portfolio. And what I say is, as a company, it's amazing the opportunities we have, but even just domestically people think we're kind of at the end of the row here as far as unconventional exploration, domestically, we have 30-plus prospects we're looking at, at any given time. And then every single year, we usually test on probably 3 to 5 of those. And the great thing about exploration is, I'd say, on those 30 prospects, they really don't cost any money. Not a whole lot of CapEx, a little bit of G&A. But outside of that, you're using existing data penetration points logs that are out there to really see if the play has a chance and the geologic model and the reservoir model work to compete within your portfolio. So -- we just see huge advantages where we can get in entry costs, extremely low in the hundreds of dollars, not the tens of thousands of dollars. And ultimately, that helps to play health throughout its whole life cycle and really helps margin expansion by keeping that DD&A rate low.

We'll come back to some of your exploration success in the Lower 48, just a few minutes. I was wondering if you could help us or provide a little bit of an update on some of your international exploration opportunities -- maybe start with Bahrain, talk a little bit about your geological concept -- and what have we learned thus far in terms of a rain?

Yes. I think the thing to start here is we see an exciting future for international and conventionals because they really haven't been explored. I mean you've got a little bit in Argentina, obviously, a little bit in Canada, but -- that's kind of the tip of the spear. Really, there's tons of great unconventional reservoirs, obviously underneath all the conventional reservoirs that are out there. And we're just now getting to a point where we think those countries are really starting to understand the fiscal terms, how unconventionals work and there's the opportunity to head in and take advantage of those. And 1 of the first places we see is the Middle East, where that opportunity has arisen -- so in Bahrain, what we have there is, this is an unconventional onshore on island, I should say, gas play, very, very prolific. It's -- there's plenty of penetration points. There's lots of infrastructure on the island, and we really knew analog wise, what we had there, probably from a production aspect really, what we wanted to do is bring unconventional technology in both drilling and completions to really get costs down, optimize wellbore design and then maximize the overall productivity of the wells there. And the great thing about that, too, is even being a gas play, we're able to go ahead and sell the gas directly there local to the government for premium pricings compared to, obviously, domestic pricing there. So extremely excited about what's going on in Bahrain there. Now obviously, we did have the conflict. So there's been a little bit of a delay, but not really much -- so much from the conflict. I'd say, if anything, it was more I've kind of explained it from the supply chain side, right, with the straight being closed being able to get in the necessary wellheads and the other things that you need. That was probably the biggest delay. But we're still on schedule right now to be able to bring on results for the second half of this year. And yes, we've been extremely happy with the partnership so far with BAPCO and the results that we've seen through our operations thus far.

Okay. Let's talk a little bit about the UAE. This is probably 1 where I sense that investors are pretty excited about the opportunities. Maybe give us a sense of, again, your geological concept where you're at with your test and maybe when you'll be able to give the market a fulsome update on your exploration an appraisal program.

Yes. We're extremely excited about the UAE, as you said. Now this 1 is unconventional oil and pure oil. -- it's actually the first unconventional concession there in the UAE, and it was 900,000 acres. So of massive scale, as you can imagine. This 1 is a little bit different. There is some infrastructure in the field. There was some penetration points there is some production. So there is plenty to build your model out and understand what you really have from there. But this one, obviously, with the scale of it, it's going to take a little bit longer time from an exploration side to delineate and get to a point of -- but with that being said, obviously, we're in there currently with operations, drilling and completing. We are on pace as we talked about, to be able to bring on results and be able to share those with you the second half of this year. And that's 1 of the ones that, obviously, if everything hits on that, we get to a point of FID, I mean it obviously could be a very -- a big part of the portfolio and 1 of the larger growth engines that we would say for the company moving forward. And from a rock standpoint, if you kind of want an analog to it, I'd say the closest analog in the U.S. would probably be the Eagle Ford, to be honest with you. So very conducive to operations. It's fairly easy operationally to drill and very prolific from an overall resource standpoint.

Is it fair to say that the or the thing that you need to get over to make the UAE commercial success will be to get well cost at a level maybe consistent with what you see in the U.S.?

I think that's great. Now are you going to get costs over there, maybe over time to U.S. levels, but that is the key. They just -- there's not a whole lot of unconventional technology, unconventional equipment over there. So really, a lot of the interventional drilling, they're still doing at conventional methods. Most of the wellbore designs when we entered countries, there are 5, 6 strings. Averages in the U.S. is 2, 3, maybe 4 string. So just bringing those technologies, I think you can drive down costs very, very quickly and then getting the supply chain, the logistics, just the thinking of unconventionals over there and get that culture ingrained, I think you'll see a huge price drop in the overall cost of those wells.

Well, SLB is presenting after you, Jeff, and then Halliburton is also here the way they'll be happy to help you. A little joke there. Let's talk a little bit about some of the exploration plays that are moving into kind of foundational asset territory, give us a quick update on the Utica.

Yes. No. The Utica is -- man, it's going outstanding. We really haven't had a miss up there all the way from exploration to delineation to our first packages. Everything basically had met or exceeded all of our expectations and so much that we were able to make the transformational acquisition of Encino, which has just been outstanding. So Obviously, over 1 million acres is what they had. We had really delineated our acreage. We actually did a deal with in Sino to be honest with you, in our northern part of our acreage to get a foothold to start. So we had dealings with them. We understood kind of their areas and what they had done in the past. And once we kind of got to a certain point in our program, we realized that quite a bit of their acreage still had really good liquid-rich oil underneath it. They had a lot of good runway for inventory, and they were just kind of glove-in-hand fit for us as far as an acquisition. And it's went phenomenal as far as an integration standpoint. The people immediately day 1, we had all of their data, input it into our systems and flowing through regularly. We had all their people onboarded very, very quickly, had all the EOG applications, brought them up to speed with the EOG culture. And we first came out with the synergies mark for in the first year, about $150 million of synergies with that acquisition -- and I'm happy to say we blew that out of the water. We had the $150 million well within 6 months. And primarily, you saw those through a lot of D&C. Obviously, through the acquisition, they were at about $750 a foot. We were at about $650 a foot. Combined today right now, we're at $600 a foot or less. And what that really entails over the period of time is we were able to increase our drilled feet per day by about 35%, increase our completed feet per lateral by about 10%. And -- we took all of our supply chain and our purchasing power logistics and put that to work up there. We saw about a 30% reduction in our overall tubular and casing costs. and about a 20% reduction in our facility costs there. So just huge cost reduction would be able to apply our scale in our technologies. And then also just from a productivity standpoint, we acquired about 1,100 wells up there. And obviously, we're a data company, a technology company, and we've got a robust suite of what we call optimizers that use machine learning, AI to really optimize artificial lift in the productivity of the wells. Well, on all the applicable wells within that 1,100, we went ahead and very quickly put the optimizers on it. We saw great results. I mean on average, you can see 3% to 5% uplift in overall base production from those optimizers on those wells. And we really think we still got a long runway to go. We're in the early innings there. We still have a lot of synergies that we can go ahead and bring forward a lot of EOG, automation, measurement and technical abilities. And then the other thing I'd say, the next hurdle cost mover you're going to see there is we are going to have in-basin sand, and it's probably the only in-basin sand mine in the Northeast, and we're going to have that coming on towards the end of this year, which on average can be a huge needle mover from a cost standpoint.

Great. I wanted to touch base a little bit on the Delaware Basin, which is a core foundational asset of the company. call it, after productivity dipped a little in 2025. We're seeing some better data in 2026. In fact, the well data looks like you're delivering a positive rate of change of well performance. I hate to get down in this level of detail, but it is kind of important for a lot of investors to look at the stock. Can you talk a little bit about what you're seeing in productivity in the Delaware, some of the drivers that you've been -- investors should be watching?

Yes. We love getting out in the details on it and stuff. We probably should get down in the details a little bit earlier, that's what we said. But Basically, what you're seeing there is, yes, in 2025, we did see a step down in overall productivity per well in the Delaware Basin, and it was 100% by design. And what we'd really seen through 2024 was we had lowered the cost basis so much there in the play that we were able to bring in additional high rate of return targets that now met our economic threshold of that 30% direct after-tax rate of return at bottom-cycle pricing. So that's all it really was. It was an economic question of -- we lowered the cost basis, brought those in. And what you're seeing on the average across all the targets is a slight degradation in productivity. But if you look at the economics, you're not seeing any degradation what so well across that play. So all of last year, you kind of saw the step tans down. We were able to obviously enjoy the benefits of the economics and the free cash flow associated with that, but that was a onetime step down. And now as you move forward into as you stated, you're actually seeing consistent, if not actually just a little bit better, which is kind of your normal iterations on your completions design and continuing to get better. overall productivity, very, very, very stable. And we plan on seeing that kind of for the continued future. Now any other markers out there, I will leave in Asterix that if we continue to lower our cost basis out there, I mean, as I said, with technology for unconventionals, that's exactly what we're looking at. If we can lower the cost basis more, there's a good chance we're able to bring in more high rate of return targets. And -- if we do cross that bridge, we'll make sure that we pass along that information, and we give everybody a heads up before you see that flow through on the public data.

Great. I wanted to talk a little bit about technology, AI, how are you using AI to improve your overall kind of capital efficiency

Yes, as I said, we're a data company, and we've always used machine learning multivariable analysis and then obviously transitioning now into the generative AI side of things. And we've actually built out our own platform, which we're methodically rolling out across the company. And really, what I'd say right now is our most valuable resource by far is our people, thinking outside the box, being technical leaders innovating, finding new ways to do things better. What AI is really going to do for us is it's going to take away all those monotonous tasks. So it's kind of easy, simple time-consuming task. It's going to speed them up immensely from an analytics standpoint, from a databasing standpoint, from an actual data capture standpoint. And it's going to allow our people to really focus on the nuts and bolts of lowering cost and making the wells better. And that's 1 thing that I'd say is if you talk to your that GPT and ask it to do something that's never been done before, show me how to innovate and how to get better. only going to be able to use the data that's out there and give you an answer forward from there. Our people are going to be able to think outside the box and find things that have never been done before in the industry to be able to move it forward and get it better. and that's what we want them focused on. And we'll let AI focus on kind of the low-hanging fruit, easier tasks and mundane tasks that take time away from our people.

Jeff, this is the last conference before you guys kind of move into the quiet period. Just any operational updates, how are you tracking versus 2Q expectations and just full year operational guidance?

Yes. Well, I mean, it's still obviously too early to talk about Q2 or the rest of the year. But what I can say is after Q1, as we announced, we had a phenomenal start to the year. And the company is doing just like they always do, they execute, they're hitting the marks. And if not exceeding those. So we're under CapEx or pretty much at CapEx, I should say, within the first quarter. We were over on volumes. We are under on cash costs. Everything was kind of firing on all cylinders. And like I said, big focus is making sure the integration continues to go smooth there within Sino and it has. So yes, just extremely excited about the year and how everything is set up. Obviously, cash flows have went up immensely with the forward strip moving up and yes just excited about where the portfolio is at both domestic and international and continue to move forward all those opportunities.

Great. I think we have time for a question or two. Maybe I'll sneak in a last one is how is EOG thinking about the improvement in Waha. We've obviously -- you're going to get better connectivity from the Permian. Just how is that -- how do you think about that going into kind of next year?

The first thing I'd say is we have minimum exposure to Waha, which we're very proud of. We kind of less than 7%, normally less than 5% of volumes to Waha. And what you're going to see here is, over the course of this year, you've got about 5, maybe 6 Bcf coming online -- there is actually some capacity that just came online here about a week ago, and you saw Waha bump up about $3, $4 price. So you already see what kind of taken that weight off of it has really done. So -- and then beyond this 5 or 6, you've got coming on, you've got another 6 Bcf or so of egress that's going to be coming out of the basin. So that on top of potential data center demand and other power demand draw there, we expect the Waha to probably turn positive, kind of come September, October time frame as strip pricing as -- or shows and you'll start to really see some relief from that aspect. So we're at minimum exposure with it right now, but I think you're going to see brighter days for Waha as we kind of move forward here and we get some more egress there out of the basin.

Jeff, let's cut it off there. Thank you so much.