Murphy Oil Corporation (MUR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. My name is Sarah, and I will be your conference operator today. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn it over to Atif Riaz, Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasurer.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and welcome to Murphy's 3-part Educational Webinar series. This series has been designed to highlight the company's exploration and development strategy with a specific focus on our growing Vietnam business. Today's webinar will feature prepared remarks by members of Murphy's senior leadership team, followed by a live question-and-answer session. A copy of the presentation for today's webinar is posted on the Investor Relations section of Murphy's website. As a reminder, our webinars may contain forward-looking statements as defined under U.S. securities laws. No assurances can be given that these events will occur or that the projections will be attained. A variety of factors exist that may cause actual results to differ. For further discussion of risk factors, please refer to our most recent annual report filed with the SEC. Murphy takes no duty to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, except as required by law. Throughout today's webinar, production numbers, reserves and financial amounts are adjusted to exclude noncontrolling interest in the Gulf of America. I will now turn the call over to Eric Hambly, our President and Chief Executive Officer.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. Today, we are kicking off a 3-part conversation about the unique exploration and development capabilities driving Murphy's long-term value creation with a focus on our Vietnam business. You will hear from 2 of Murphy's key leaders, Chris Olson, our Senior Vice President of Exploration and Subsurface; and Frank Garcia, our Senior Vice President of Development and Engineering. Our first webinar today is Strategic Exploration and Development, and it is designed to provide a deeper understanding of how our offshore capabilities create long-term value in a market that has become heavily focused on short-cycle shale-dominated plays. Webinar 2 on March 10 will be a deep dive on Murphy's Vietnam opportunity, including Vietnam's government, economy, geology of the Cuu Long Basin, our track record in the region and why we see Vietnam as a long-term value driver for Murphy. And then webinar 3 on March 24 moves into the fundamentals of production sharing contracts or PSCs and how to frame and model our Vietnam PSCs. With that overall road map in mind, let's take a look at key discussion topics for today. First, we will provide an overview of Murphy's unique history, how more than a century of exploration heritage has shaped the way we operate today. That history, combined with our belief that exploration remains a global strategic necessity, underpins our ongoing focus on exploration. We will then talk about the macro themes highlighting why exploration is essential to meeting long-term energy demand. From there, we will transition into Murphy's strategic approach to exploration, the discipline, workflows and integrated decisions that help us high-grade opportunities and maintain a robust prospect maturation funnel. And finally, we will walk through how this strategy delivers real value when combined with strong development expertise and skill set. Exploration alone is not enough. Our ability to develop efficiently is what converts geology into cash flow, and that's a key component of our competitive advantage. Murphy has a long history in oil and gas with our first major oil discovery dating back to the Delhi field in Louisiana in 1944. As you can see from this time line, we have leaned into innovative exploration and development throughout our history. One milestone that really defined Murphy as an international offshore operator was the Kikeh project in Malaysia. Kikeh began with a major deepwater discovery in 2002 and reached first oil just 5 years later in 2007, setting the record for the fastest deepwater development in the industry at the time. After Kikeh, we discovered and brought online the Sarawak oil and gas fields in Malaysia in record time as well. Our success in Malaysia is what ultimately opened the door for us in Vietnam, and we see several analogs between our Sarawak development and what our Vietnam development is shaping up to be. We will talk more about this in webinar too. More recently, in 2022, we demonstrated our offshore expertise by bringing the King's Quay asset online in just 3 years from sanction with a payback period of less than 1 year. These achievements are just some of many proof points of Murphy's capability to take on technically challenging offshore projects and move from discovery to execution with speed, safety and discipline. Murphy today has a diverse but intentional portfolio with production in North America and soon in Vietnam and exploration prospects in the Gulf of America, Vietnam, Côte d'Ivoire and Morocco. Our onshore and offshore assets are strategically complementary as they provide operational flexibility, financial resilience and exposure to exploration-driven upside across multiple regions. Our business is balanced across 3 value streams: conventional offshore, which provides stable, long-lived cash flow; North America unconventional, which gives us short-cycle flexibility with decades of inventory; and international exploration, which is where we unlock the large-scale, high-value opportunities that really differentiate us from our peers. Our strategy enables us to dedicate a material part of our capital and personnel resources to exploration, which we believe is a necessity for any oil and gas company with an eye towards long-term success. I want to touch on why we believe exploration is so important in today's world. On the top right, you can see the trajectory of global oil production decline if the industry were to stop investing. Global supply would fall by roughly 5.5 million barrels per day every year from 2025 through 2035. This is the equivalent of losing the entire production base provided by Brazil and Norway combined every single year. The world cannot maintain the supply needed for long-term demand without continued exploration and development. The bottom chart highlights that even if we continue to invest in existing projects, it still leaves a significant energy demand gap in the future. This underscores Murphy's thesis on the importance of exploration. It's not just about growth for Murphy. It's about meeting a critical structural need in the global energy ecosystem. Core to the issues facing the industry today is that the size of discoveries has been shrinking for the last 60 years. In the 1960s, the industry discovered close to 90 billion barrels of oil per year. Today, that number has fallen to single digits. As the demand grows, the supply is shrinking. To add to this, the time it takes to develop projects has increased. Since 2010, it has taken nearly 20 years on average to move a conventional project from grassroots prospect identification to exploration, discovery and ultimately first production. So while we're in an oversupplied market today, we're facing a structural long-term shift, declining base production on one side and fewer discoveries that are taking longer to come online on the other. This is where lean, financially strong and operationally skilled companies like Murphy are best positioned to play a role in the E&P space. And frankly, there aren't many of us out there. If we think about who can fill this gap in the market, there are very few companies who have consistently invested in exploration and maintain the relevant skills and resources required to successfully explore offshore. When you narrow the universe of 50 or so U.S. exploration and production companies down to those with meaningful offshore exposure, a strong balance sheet and the ability to move quickly into a new region, only 2 companies stand out. Of these 2, Murphy is the only one with an exploration pipeline that could potentially double our offshore reserves. Just 10 years ago, the universe of U.S. E&P companies and those focused on exploration would have been much larger. Today, Murphy stands out among the handful of companies still exploring for and finding oil. We pride ourselves on being oil finders and have remained committed to exploration as many in the industry shifted to pure shale plays. Our advantage comes from our oil finder culture, which permeates throughout the organization, the development skill set established over many decades as well as a disciplined financial strategy and strong balance sheet that support our exploration and development programs. At Murphy, we have a history of creating value by investing strategically through cycles. This has allowed us to develop some of our biggest projects such as Kikeh and King's Quay when oil prices and service costs were low and bring them online when oil prices were high. We can't time the market, but operating our own assets and maintaining a steady commitment to exploration and development has allowed us to optimize value while continually building a refreshed pipeline of opportunities. Maintaining our exploration and development muscle has given us a significant advantage in cycle time compared to our peers. On average, Murphy is able to deliver first oil about 40% faster than the industry. As the need for new barrels grows, we will be able to deliver projects faster and create outsized value for our shareholders. Chris and then Frank will now share more about the key ingredients that fuel our successful exploration and development programs. With that, I will now turn it over to Chris.

Thanks, Eric. Today at Murphy, we maintain our unique exploration culture and capabilities as oil finders. When you look at the map to the right, you can see Murphy's current focused exploration footprint. This international business, however, is not new to us. If you're not familiar with Murphy's history, Murphy was exposed to historically broad global exploration footprint over the last quarter century with positions onshore and offshore, shallow water and deepwater and locations across North America, South America, West Africa, North Africa and Southeast Asia. This business is absolutely at the core of what we do. Today, exploration at Murphy is purposely designed to support our existing cash flow engine in the Gulf of America and expose ourselves to organic growth for long-term resilience in a short-cycle dominated world. Four core exploration pillars form the foundation of this exposure and the strategy. These pillars include our differentiated exploration culture, our rigorous portfolio management and our data-led regional evaluations and our unique offshore operating capabilities. With this, we'll drive into each of these pillars on the coming slides. We believe our differentiated exploration culture sets Murphy apart. I realize that this is kind of soft and hard to describe, but it's something that we are very proud of. We have built a productive environment that attracts, develops and retains top exploration talent by empowering multidisciplinary teams with deep and complementary subject matter expertise. Just as importantly, we are intentionally developing a runway of exploration talent and future leaders, ensuring that Murphy is positioned for exploration success well into the next decade. For us, success isn't defined by a single well. It's measured by overall program value creation. This mindset encourages creativity, challenges assumptions and promotes productive technical tension where ideas are rigorously tested and matured before capital is risked. Exploration is a hard business that can take patience to yield the huge result. Our team realizes that there will be failures, but we are built to accept these calculated risks, learn and continually improve. This is a sign of a healthy exploration organization that is enabled by Murphy's business model having multiple free cash flow generating engines. Finally, we are supported by an experienced drilling organization that allows us to operate globally without being constrained by geography or water depth. This unique combination of creativity, disciplined risk-taking and execution capability is driving results. I want to talk about how we build a balanced and disciplined exploration portfolio, which is essential for sustaining long-term growth and managing risk across cycles. Murphy's strategy ensures that we have the right mix of lower risk, mature and proven basin opportunities and higher risk, higher reward frontier prospects with transformational growth potential. The exploration portfolio is being built holistically to perform across commodity cycles and not just as a collection of individual prospects. Portfolio balance creates durability in our exploration organization. Low-risk, mature and small proven basin opportunities support near-term cash flow and production volumes through higher-margin infrastructure-led exploration. These opportunities give us dependable and repeatable outcomes, allowing us to simultaneously pursue large, longer-dated growth options. In terms of portfolio maturation, we don't just assemble opportunities. We mature them systematically. Investment discipline is supported by a fit-for-purpose maturation process that ensures consistency, introduces productive technical tension, test the technical work, calibrates risk and develops opportunity through choice. This helps us sequence our drilling schedule so that we are exposing ourselves to the right prospects at the right time. Opportunities, however, must earn their way forward, and we preserve optionality at every stage, allowing us to advance, pivot, pause or exit based on value and risk and not just execution readiness. This discipline drives successful exploration outcomes. By deliberately balancing mature proven and frontier basins across regions like the Gulf of America, Vietnam, Côte d'Ivoire and Morocco, we avoid technical and geographic risk concentration, and we are developing a durable portfolio of actionable opportunities that deliver repeatable results while simultaneously exposing Murphy to transformational upside. Our exploration process starts with the big picture. We begin our evaluations at a global scale, understanding the intricacies of basin formation through plate-tectonics and basin analysis. This process provides crucial regional geologic context that allows us to identify, research and critically understand the uncertainty associated with the presence or absence of each of the elements of a petroleum system. These elements include the likelihood of source rock presence, reservoir presence and the prediction of reservoir quality, seal rock deposition, trap formation, hydrocarbon maturation and hydrocarbon migration. We put the earth back together through time and rely on global, regional and local analogs to reduce uncertainty. Regional work is the backbone of what we do, directly informing us where we choose to explore. It screens for geologic complexity, defines the extent of each basin's exploration playground and establishes critical limiting geological and operational boundaries. By building this context upfront, we have substantially improved our predrill prediction accuracy. Importantly, establishing good regional context allows us to avoid opportunity shopping for one-off individual well opportunities. This is what allows us to see value where others don't. It identifies massive potential in the middle of a mature basin offshore of Vietnam, and it allows us to see the upside offshore Morocco, where others have failed to realize success to date. Fundamentally, our regional approach drives our new access strategies by putting exploration ahead of execution, ultimately driving more informed investment decisions. Murphy consistently allocates 10% to 15% of capital to exploration, ensuring that we are developing and maintaining a strong and sustainable portfolio. With this, we remain focused on increased exposure to emerging and frontier basins where the fiscal terms are attractive and the resource potential can be transformational. We are pre-investing in the right data, and we run a fit-for-purpose assurance process that challenges assumption, removes bias and identifies clear opportunity off-ramps and necessary pivot points. This ensures our portfolio is consistently defined and strategically aligned with our overall execution plan. Our people make this all possible, though. We have a skilled and creative exploration team already in place that understands how exploration impacts the bottom line, not just technically but commercially. And this is especially important at Murphy. With this, exploration at Murphy is delivering. Since 2024, our exploration program has achieved what we believe will be a 60% commercial success rate and all noncommercial projects from '24 to '26 have found hydrocarbons. This is evidence that we're doing the right things and exposing Murphy to the right opportunities. Importantly, as we previously discussed, Murphy maintains offshore execution capabilities that uniquely differentiate us from our peers. And with that, I will now turn it over to Frank Garcia, Senior Vice President, Global Development and Engineering, to discuss how these capabilities support exploration success.

Thank you, Chris. Over the coming slides, I'm excited to highlight our top quartile offshore capabilities that enable Chris' exploration and subsurface team to pursue resources where others cannot. We have deep experience across both shallow and deepwater, allowing us to operate and maintain control over execution, timing and capital, reducing uncertainty from discovery through development. Our footprint is both domestic and international, supported by a strong reputation and long-standing relationships that enable access to opportunities globally. Most importantly, this capability is embedded across the organization and is something we are very proud of. From technical teams to operations and back-office support, we built this muscle over decades, focused on enabling top quartile time to first oil. This integration of exploration and offshore execution is a key driver of Murphy's repeatable success. One of Murphy's key competitive advantages is our ability to fast track first oil after a discovery is made. This is not luck, but by design. Our skilled teams enabled by our flat and tightly aligned organization allow us to make quick decisions. Also, once we determine we have a commercial discovery, we progress field appraisal and development processes in parallel. This contrasts with other companies' approach to fully delineate fields before starting development activities. Finally, for our development concepts, we do not preferentially engineer our solutions. We lean on our experience and industry partners to deliver fit-for-purpose solutions to maximize value creation. It is this approach that makes us a strategic alternative to super majors in the global E&P space and frankly, a great place to work. Host nations and national oil companies recognize Murphy's development capabilities, and this recognition is what allows us to opportunities like our Vietnam Cuu Long Basin position. On the graph on the right, you can see that the industry average for years from exploration to start-up have increased over the last 25 years, but Murphy has been well below the average on 2 of our key projects, which I will talk about on upcoming slides. Our offshore development competitive advantage will be relevant if we didn't have the resources to leverage it. Our strong balance sheet is another differentiator for us where Murphy maintains top-tier low leverage, allowing us the flexibility to advance high-return offshore projects without being constrained by market cycles. A strong balance sheet and liquidity means we don't have to delay projects, feel obligated to farm down interest in any of our discoveries or adjust pacing for financing reasons. We can execute when it makes the most sense economically, allowing us to create the most value for our shareholders from discovery to first oil. The financial stability is a key enabler of our offshore execution track record, and it positions us to move decisively on Vietnam as discoveries mature toward development. The Kikeh and King's Quay developments are 2 prime examples of Murphy's offshore execution. For the Kikeh project in Malaysia, the project took just 5 years from discovery to first oil, an exceptionally fast time line for a deepwater development and a true field of first for the region. Ultimately, the project generated over $6 billion in pretax value for Murphy. We carry those same capabilities into the Gulf of America with King's Quay, where we deliver first oil in only 3 years from sanction, which is the top 10% of industry cycle times. Because of this strong execution, we achieved project payout in 1 year. Faster execution pulls cash flow forward, reduces capital at risk and improves full cycle economics. That speed paired with disciplined project management and a strong balance sheet is what allows us to translate great geology into great returns. And importantly, the same execution capability is what positions us so well for Vietnam. The faster we can move discoveries at Hai Su Vang through appraisal into development, the sooner we unlock value. I want to walk through the history of our Kikeh project in more detail because there are a lot of parallels to what we are preparing to do in Vietnam. Kikeh is the fourth largest discovery in Southeast Asia in the last 25 years. Our entry into Malaysia was led by a discovered resource and significant exploration upside. Murphy acquired these blocks after they were released by a super major. This is a common theme in many of our development successes and an example of recognizing potential where others do not. Once Kikeh was declared commercial, the project was sanctioned during historic low prices and was funded by the divestment of noncore Canadian assets. It was the first deepwater field developed in Malaysia and require new technology, new partnerships and an integrated team able to move quickly and decisively, all of which we uniquely achieved as a resourceful and efficient independent E&P player. True to our philosophy, we fast-track development activities and deliver first oil 5 years after discovery, allowing the project to flow in a period where oil was significantly above the assumed sanctioned price deck. With this success, Murphy was able to extract value to us, we transform our offshore business with our Gulf of America acquisitions and open the door to our current Vietnam business. And our Hai Su Vang or Golden Sea Lion discovery is a perfect example of the opportunities we can capture by being a strategic preferred partner. Eric spoke about our thesis on oil supply and where we believe it's headed given the trends we're seeing. So I want to frame our Golden Sea Lion project in terms of onshore inventory since declining shale inventory is one of the key macro themes in focus today. The Golden Sea Lion discovery is equivalent to more than 500 Tier 1 locations in the Eagle Ford Shale, which highlights the scale and materiality of this fine. These are locations that are neither for sale or even exist in South Texas for somebody to capture. This is the true value of greenfield exploration success. The resource quality is exceptional. We're seeing $1 to $2 per barrel finding cost and an estimated full cycle F&D cost of around $10 per BOE with breakeven below $40. Those metrics position Vietnam firmly as a Tier 1 oil project with strong returns and long-life value. What makes this even more compelling is the development environment, shallow water, premium Brent pricing and runway to capture exploration upside via future tiebacks. This combination supports efficient execution and a clear line of sight to future cash flow. In short, Vietnam gives us a high-impact, low-cost oil-weighted growth engine, exactly the kind of organic value that complements our offshore capabilities and elevates Murphy's long-term profile. We will discuss our Vietnam opportunity in greater detail in the next webinar. But for now, I will turn it over to Eric for the closing slides.

Thanks, Frank. Over the past 2.5 decades, we have strategically reshaped our offshore portfolio, evolving from our legacy position in the Gulf of America to successful exploration in Malaysia and returning to the Gulf of America through asset acquisitions from log exploration and the formation of the MP GOM joint venture with assets from Petrobras. During this time, we also built a complementary onshore business, providing balance and runway to enable our exploration strategy. Looking ahead, there are several levers for growth in our base assets, but we are presenting a scenario with flat base production in this chart to highlight the significance of our Vietnam assets. As you can see, Vietnam will become a material business for Murphy in the 2030s, bringing to life our strategy of creating long-term shareholder value through organic growth. As we think about our Vietnam growth and what it means for our company, I wanted to share with you a similar story from our past. This chart shows how exploration success can impact our valuation in the market and the value this brings to our shareholders. After the Kikeh discovery in Malaysia, we saw an increasing uplift in our share price versus peers, which accelerated sharply after first oil. Our shareholders who supported us from discovery to first oil saw outsized returns, both through a long-standing dividend and a strong share price growth. We believe we are on track to replicate that success with our offshore exploration and development strategy in Vietnam. As we have discussed today, Murphy offers a distinct value proposition compared with other E&P companies. Our offshore track record, reputation and specialized exploration personnel distinguish us from peers of comparable size. On the other hand, we maintain a lean team and dedicated focus on exploration, allowing us to advance projects unencumbered by the red tape often present in larger organizations. In addition, our unique expertise and financial capability enable us to pursue resource opportunities that may be too big for independent companies, yet remain below the threshold targeted by major industry players. This is exactly how our strategy wins. Malaysia serves as a prime example, where we delivered significant value to shareholders by successfully exploring and then efficiently developing oil and gas fields in offshore blocks previously abandoned by super majors. Vietnam is a similar story. Murphy fills a critical gap for national oil companies by providing the ability to develop resources that might otherwise remain untapped, an increasingly important role on the global energy stage. In closing, our thesis is that within the next decade, the world will face an oil supply shortage while global energy demand continues to grow. With the decline of shale, exploration is becoming more important and companies with the capability, discipline and the financial strength to explore and develop efficiently will be the ones who deliver outsized value. We're proud that Murphy stayed invested in offshore exploration when others stepped away to focus on pure shale plays. Our commitment preserve the talent, expertise and overall offshore capability that differentiate us today. As we look ahead, we are now bringing that strength and capability to Vietnam. With the right resources, the right people and the right momentum, Vietnam represents the next chapter of long-term sustainable growth for Murphy. Thank you, and we hope this session was helpful. We hope you will join us for a deep dive into Vietnam in our next webinar on March 10.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Leo Mariani with ROTH Capital.

I wanted to follow up a little bit on Côte d'Ivoire here. Just wanted to get kind of a rough sort of time line for when you expect to decision the Bubale well. And then additionally, if whatever reason this well is not successful, would that potentially hasten an exit from Côte d'Ivoire? Or are there other future projects that maybe you guys are maturing?

Leo, thanks for your question. Thanks for participating in our webinar today. Briefly on Bubale timing, we anticipate an ability to release a result of that well in about 45 days or so. We will -- we are currently drilling the well and making good progress. And I think the time line around 45 days probably makes some sense. The short answer on the results of recent wells plus Bubale is that we will use the data from all of the wells to reassess the prospectivity that exists on the blocks. There are a number of prospects on the blocks that are unrelated to the plays that we just tested. There are also prospects that are of the same age or in the same type of region, the prospects that we drilled. And we believe that there may be some information that informs future prospectivity. We will likely have an operational pause after Bubale, where we assess over the course of a year or maybe 1.5 years, whether there are prospects that we are excited to go drill and kind of regroup and plan. So we don't have a current conclusion about what it may mean. There's a lot of information to assess, and there are quite a few remaining prospects on the blocks that we may drill in the future.

Your next question comes from Carlos Escalante with Wolfe Research.

If I can turn to Slide 21, I'd like to unpack really what's going on after 2025 or what you're describing that 2025 is. I think on your slide deck is #20, but on ours is 21. It looks like the exploration upside option, it looks like for Vietnam, that could be double your current exploration success, if I'm interpreting the chart correctly on the lighter blue shade. Is that upside a function of what you think the underlying resource could be in a best case scenario today? Or is that more a function of what an optimal development pace and case might be?

That's a really good question. And we are going to touch on that in a lot more detail at the next webinar on March 10. But I'll kind of briefly frame it now and we'll again in more detail in about a week. The results from our discovered fields in Vietnam, so Lac Da Vang Golden Camel and Hai Su Vang Golden Sea Lion put us in that Vietnam exploration success category. Obviously, with Hai Su Vang, we're in the middle of an appraisal program. We have uncertainty about the size of the resource. We are on this slide using what we think is a conservative view of the potential of that field. And obviously, we have not yet planned a development scenario. So the rate is an estimate. But the currently discovered resource of Lac Da Vang and Hai Su Vang suggest a development that's at least 30,000 barrels a day net to us. A larger Hai Su Vang or more optimistic view of the potential there could push you closer to the 50,000 barrels a day or have more confidence in both of them pushing you to a higher rate. The upside, exploration upside, we believe that there is significant remaining prospectivity on the 2 blocks where we're operating in the Cuu Long and there may be about as much resource to be discovered as has been discovered. Obviously, it's exploration, and we don't always have success. We have been fortunate so far in our Cuu Long business to have 100% success exploring, and there are quite a few prospects left to drill. I think what we'll see is a likely setup of a northern hub in Block 15-105 and a southern hub 15-217, anchored by the development of Lac Da Vang and Hai Su Van. And then additional fields, both the several that we've already discovered in the 15-105 block and other likely future discoveries could push us up. So what you see in this plot is a sort of cartoon view. It's not intended to be a quantitative exact outcome, but we have confidence in a 30,000 to 50,000 barrel a day business. The higher end realized by larger Hai Su Vang and then plateauing at a high rate for a long time would likely be driven by additional exploration success where existing discoveries like the Pink, Brown and White Camels get tied into the Golden Camel development and then also additional exploration success being tied in kind of in a phased way over the period of time in the early 20 to mid-2030s.

That makes sense. Am I able to make a follow-up? Or are we holding to one question?

You can have a follow-up, no problem. Whatever you want, Carlos?

I appreciate it. Well, you're talking about it next week, so I kind of feel like I burn my one question. So taking a step back, big picture, it sounds like this is more representative than anything than intended to be a representation of Murphy 2028, 2035 time line. So -- with that in mind and where you sit today with Vietnam, I know you used to give a very soft guide back in the day that elicited or looked like it would take you to 210, 215 BOE per day. In light of where we are today, can you give us a quick refresher of where that stands? And I don't know if even serves to talk about an upside scenario to that, given the pipeline of exploration you have and being how binary it is. But if you feel comfortable enough offering that, that would be great as well.

Yes, it's a great question, and we get that one quite a bit. What I have done over the last year or so is pivot my explanation of the future of Murphy from a very granular specific range of production rates. And what I've tried to do is communicate the ability of our assets to deliver and our assets provide us optionality. There are things we can do between now and 2032 that could affect the overall production rate of the company because we may do something different than a plan that was developed several years ago. But what I will tell you is our assets have the ability to deliver low single-digit growth. And with the significant increased volume in Vietnam, they have an ability to put us into the same production range that we had previously guided that [indiscernible] is in reach is likely. I have tried to pivot away from a very specific description of when we hit that exact number and tried to say that our assets allow us material organic growth and flexibility. If we have low oil prices for a while, we may choose to do something in our onshore business or our offshore business that may affect near-term rates, may affect 2-, 3-year rates, but the overall ability of the assets to deliver exactly as we previously guided is there. And I think you'll see that be delivered over the course of the next 10 years or so.

Your next question comes from Charles Meade with Johnson Rice.

Eric, I feel like one of the themes you're trying to develop here is that you, Murphy, have less competition in developing some of these offshore projects than you used to. And I wondered if you could kind of give maybe some detail, if that's the right narrative, give some detail on how the you tell me the right word, how you were invited into this Vietnam block in [indiscernible] for what happened in Côte d'Ivoire. And just tell us who you think your competition is when host governments are looking to bring someone into develop?

Yes. Thanks very much, Charles. I'll first touch on our entrance into Vietnam, and it's also something we'll give additional detail on at our next webinar. But briefly on Vietnam, we had developed, as you know, since you followed us for a long time, a significant business in Malaysia. And the success that we had in our Sarawak business in Malaysia stood out to some of the regional NOCs, including PetroVietnam. And they invited us to enter the Cuu Long Basin Block 15-105 because they saw the success we had both in developing oil and gas in very similar type of shallow water environment. and they weren't seeing that. That Block 15-105 was previously operated by a super major who exited the government ended up with the larger ownership, and they wanted to bring in a capable operator that they thought could move things along and be effective. So we were invited into a block that previously had not been something that an external western party could enter. It was sort of viewed as the forbidden basin that you could not get into. And we were very happy to welcome into the basin because we had been looking at it, identified it as one of the few oily basins left to explore in, in Southeast Asia. So we were excited to enter. We were entering the block when there was a couple of discoveries on the block, including the first well in Lac Da Vang, and we entered an appraised successfully Lac Da Vang, which led to the development we're executing now. Since then, we've had additional exploration success, of course, which we've just talked about. So it's very nice when you are sought out as an operating partner by an NOC because you've demonstrated a track record of delivery. The Côte d'Ivoire experience is somewhat similar. It's a block that we had been looking at for quite a long time, going back to about the time of 2014, we had kept an eye on Côte d'Ivoire and identified the potential there. And we were able to move to enter when many companies had stopped exploring and had low level of activity. And we expressed quite a bit of interest to the government in the 2021, 2022 time frame, and they had a largely unleased position Eni had significant acreage holding in Côte d'Ivoire with a differentiated exploration strategy and many of the blocks that were available in the country, and we approached them. And I think they like what we have to offer, our ability to explore in deepwater and also if we have success to be able to develop efficiently is something that is desirable for countries when they're looking to partner with someone to bring somebody in. There are many discovered resources in West Africa that were discovered by super majors that are sitting undeveloped. And that's a frustrating experience for a host government. They do not want that to happen. And when they look at a company like us and our demonstrated track record of swift execution of exploration and development campaigns, it's a desirable attribute. And so it does provide a competitive advantage. And then my last comment on that is that we do not need to find a 1 billion barrel field to be successful. We are very happy to find significant discoveries that are smaller, and that differentiates us in 2 ways from super majors. One is that super majors need to find very large resource for reserve replacement. They would be disappointed in sub-billion barrel scale. And also, if we find a material discovery as we have in Hai Su Vang or may in the future in Côte d'Ivoire or elsewhere, we have an ability to create outsized value for our shareholders because the significance of that discovery and the value creation from it is large compared to our current enterprise value. And that's a major differentiator and allows us to be competitive. Successful exploration is driven by a quality team with differentiated technical capabilities and ideas. It's not driven by massive scale as we've demonstrated.

Got it. And then my follow-up, I'd like to ask a question about Morocco, which is one of your more recent entries. I did some -- once you guys announced that position, I went to try to figure out some of the history there. And it looks like there have been some natural gas discoveries. It looks like you guys -- somebody or a European entity retained part of a block, but you guys picked up what the remainder of it was. But I wonder if you could talk -- that looked to me -- maybe you can tell us the story, was that the same sort of invited in? Or was that where you were in some kind of competitive negotiation to get that concession? And talk about what kind of prospectivity I'm really thinking oil versus gas you see there.

Yes. Thanks for that. What we see in Morocco is that our team with some fairly unique capability, we're able to do some analysis of the prospectivity there. We identified an opportunity set to explore where others have missed it. In fact, we had previously missed it. And when we did a comprehensive regional study, we identified some prospectivity on the block that we're excited about. The block contains a large undrilled way structure that other people have probably looked at and said that won't work. We have done some work to assess that it may and entered the block when we went to approach the Moroccan government, they were happy to welcome us in. And what we will likely do in Morocco over the next few years is reprocess seismic and determine whether or not our preliminary view holds up to more scrutiny with reprocess and improved imaging and then decide do we want to drill a well or not. This is a frontier play. Those frontier plays tend to have a higher risk component, but the upside with success is that it could be quite large. The history of exploration in Morocco is not very strong. There have been a number of larger and smaller companies that have explored and found hydrocarbons in the offshore. There's limited amount of production onshore in Morocco. The country is in desperate need for more energy. They import a lot of natural gas into the country from Spain. So an oil or gas discovery would likely be quite valuable here. We typically tend to explore for oil, and we have an oil story around why we'd be exploring in this block.

Got it. Anything on the Atlantic margin is going to at least generate some interest.

Thanks for your appreciation of the webinar.

Your next question comes from Tim Rezvan with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Just as a lead off, I think this is an awesome idea to sort of seminar through March. So on behalf of probably all of us on the sell side, thank you for setting this up. My question, Charles stole my Morocco question. So the one I had here, I recognize that the exploration side of the business is part of the DNA, and you've shown the track record for decades. But opportunities like Vietnam come along kind of once every generation. You are still sort of a mid-cap company with a strong balance sheet, but finite liquidity. So how do you balance the need to kind of continue sort of scratching the exploration itch when you're sitting on something so large and transformational? Because you can make the case that maybe some other activities should sort of stop at a time when you don't have a lot of free cash flow because of the needs. I mean it's a high-class problem to develop a prospect like this. But how do you kind of balance those different items as you think about the business?

I appreciate that question. And let me try to frame it this way. We believe that the development that we will conduct in Vietnam fits pretty well inside our capital program that we've been guiding a $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion annual capital program should be sufficient to continue to invest in an onshore stable production profile driven by our Eagle Ford Shale and our Tupper Montney business and allow us to continue to develop in Vietnam, completing the Lac Da Hong or Golden Camel development in 2029 and then ramping up spending to develop Hai Su Vang at about the same time with likely a phased development of Hai Su Vang or Golden Sea Lion in the early part of the 2030s. We are going to target first oil in the 2030 to 2031 time frame. Right now, based on what we know, those are probably equal likely first oil dates. We probably have a 2-year ramp-up type of project where all of the Hai Su Vang development is not online day 1, but we have a stage development because of the size of the field and the size of the structure, we'll have multiple drilling locations, which likely implies, although we haven't planned it yet, likely implies a stage development over a couple of year period. That allows us flexibility a bit on the capital timing. Again, I think that we can develop that pretty handily within our guided full company $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion annual capital program. There are likely times in the next few years where we will pivot slightly more investment into exploration and appraisal in our Vietnam business. We love the ability of our onshore business to be a bit flexible. We think that we can do all of those things within the current program and maintain stability of our onshore operations. But we do have and are happy to have the flexibility to pivot some of our investment. We also have an ability to pivot our investment in the deepwater Gulf. We can ramp it up or ramp it down. And that's a great advantage of having a multi-basin strategy where we're not in one thing, one play, one basin. And I think it is somewhat unique for a company, as you point out, that we're a smaller company. And again, I think that what we're able to do there allows us to create a lot of value for shareholders. We have been fortunate and work very hard to have a strong balance sheet and increase our liquidity to be in a position to do exactly what we're planning to do in Vietnam right now. If we're fortunate enough to make a significant discovery in Côte d'Ivoire, we would probably be facing a capital bill that's large there. We have 90% working interest and a deepwater field of scale would be a significant capital allocation concern for us, and we're prepared to handle that through a combination or options around bringing in a partner to help us develop, taking on a bit of debt. We would consider selling down or selling out of other assets in order to fund that. And what we would do is assess whether or not that new thing was the best thing to invest in for shareholder value creation and the role of our other assets in our portfolio, which is what we have done over the last 25 years cycling through, which we highlight on Slide 21. I hope that gives you a little bit of confidence in how Vietnam can be developed without significant change in our capital program, but also the awareness that we're willing to pivot if needed to fund larger scale developments.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question is a follow-up from Leo Mariani with ROTH Capital.

Sorry, somehow my line went dead earlier. I got cut off. I did want to ask you folks just a follow-up here on Morocco. So I think you explained your process for continuing to evaluate a big 4-way closure through seismic reprocessing. But if that were to be successful, I know there's no near-term drilling obligation, but do you have a rough estimate of when that well might actually could spud? Are we talking a year from now, 2 years, 3 years? Just trying to get a rough sense of when you guys would actually be able to attack that.

Leo, it's a good question. I think we're a little bit too early to make that call right now. I will frame it in this way. It takes about a year to plan and then begin executing a frontier exploration campaign in a place like Morocco. And so we will not surprise you with a plan. We will likely be -- when we decide to drill or not drill there, we will likely be guiding the timing of that well in advance of the campaign. I just hesitate to say when we do it now because I don't know if we will drill a well or not. It's something that we will study and evaluate. It's definitely not this year, and it's likely not a '27 thing. I can't tell you if it's a '28, '29 or '30. I just don't know. And when we know, we'll let you know, and it will take about a year to make it happen.

Okay. So would that sort of just an inference here basically mean it would take you guys maybe a year or a little bit more to reprocess and interpret all the seismic on your end. Is that kind of a way to think about that?

That's fair. I would think a couple of years of studying it.

Okay. I know you're going to have another, I guess, webinar on Vietnam, but you kind of mentioned this a few times on the call already. But are there other exploration prospects in Vietnam that you are currently maturing? I know you've got these 2 significant developments that you're working on, but it sounds like there's more to do exploration-wise in Vietnam. Is that right?

There is definitely more to do in our 2 Cuu Long blocks in Vietnam. I imagine we will have an active exploration campaign there in '27 through 2029 period. We will likely find out what the entire block prospectivity is so that we can plan a phased development of both blocks to fully develop all of the economic resource of the blocks before they expire in the 2040s or '50s, whenever they are.

Your next question is a follow-up from Charles Meade with Johnson Rice.

Yes. Eric, forgive me if you addressed this, and I missed it. I think at least -- this is about [ PON ] at Côte d'Ivoire. Where are you guys in the process of making a call on whether that will be a development?

Great question, Charles. We had an obligation when we entered the block that contains the PON discovery to submit a field development plan. We prepared and submitted a field development plan. We did that last year and the government has received that. In parallel with preparing and that field development plan, we also negotiated with the government, the Ivorian government around a gas sales structure that might make it a project that was economic for us to pursue. As a reminder, PON is an oil field with a fairly thin oil column and a large gas cap. So it will produce significant gas resources. Roughly 2/3 of the total resource on a BOE basis would be gas and the rest would be oil and liquids. And so the gas price and the structure around the gas sales agreement is important for that commerciality of that field. We failed to reach an agreement with the Ivorian government on a structure for the gas sales that would make that a project that we wanted to pursue. And we got then -- at the end of those negotiations, we got close to the beginning of executing our 3-well exploration program. And I think the Ivorian government wanted to see if we find additional gas resource that could be added to the PON gas that could make that project move forward. It is interesting to note that between the Bubale prospect, which we're drilling now and the landing point at the shore, along the way on that path is the PON discovery. So if Bubale encounters an oil field with associated gas or happens to be a gas field of significant resource, it may add resource that would help justify the significant cost of gas pipeline from PON to the beach. And so that's something that we'll be evaluating in the future along with our partners in Côte d'Ivoire.

That's a really -- that's great detail, Eric, because there's -- it helps me understand how those pieces fit together, which is not obvious before. Last question for me, and I know we're supposed to be more focused on Vietnam. But this Bubale project that I'm going to dilatant this, but it looks like how far you are offshore and the size of your block there, is that like a basin floor turbidite fan that you're going after? Is that kind of the -- which has kind of been one of the ideal sorts of targets in that part of West Africa? Or can you just talk about the geological setting of your target horizon there?

Well, Charles, you got it exactly right. And I think we need to hire you as a geologist.

I'd hope you drill more dry holes, Eric.

Your next question is a follow-up from Carlos Escalante with Wolfe Research.

It's actually Doug on Carlos' line. Eric, I hope you don't mind me jumping on. I wanted to follow up on Charles' question, if you don't mind. Our understanding is Côte d'Ivoire is a bunch of independent play types that you're targeting. Obviously, you've had a couple of unsuccessful tests so far. Can you just tell us what the failure mechanisms have been and what it would take for you to walk away from the -- from a broader exploration program?

Yes, it's a great question. So the first 2 wells that we drilled, the Civette and the Caracal wells, we're testing different plays. Civette tested an interval that is shallower and equivalent to Eni's [indiscernible] discovery. We encountered oil in multiple reservoirs. We just did not find enough oil to have a commercial deepwater development. And so we are encouraged that the technical work leading up to an assessment of when we see something on seismic, does it look like it could bear hydrocarbons is playing out. Finding hydrocarbons is hard. Finding commercial levels of hydrocarbon is even harder. And I think we're on track. In the Caracal prospect, it was targeting an Albian carbonate, which was equivalent to Eni's Baleine field that's currently producing. And we encountered a well-developed Albian carbonate. We just did not find enough hydrocarbons to be commercial. We have a little more work to do to identify exactly why those outcomes happen. Of course, we just got the results from those wells, and we'll incorporate it into the future prospectivity on the blocks. There are significant remaining prospects that we will consider drilling. We don't have an answer in terms of -- today, we don't have an answer in terms of the likelihood of going back and drilling. We're going to study them. It's a piece of data. I think it's worth noting that while Eni has had tremendous success, they've been active in the basin for 1.5 decades, and they themselves drilled 7 dry holes. So exploration is a process. We're at the beginning stages of the process in Côte d'Ivoire. I'm encouraged that we're -- our geologic assessment from our team has held up pretty well. I'm disappointed in not having commercial discoveries as always, but I'm not surprised because each individual prospect has a chance of finding hydrocarbons that's likely somewhere in the 25% to 35% chance of success.

Eric, a quick follow-up. Is there any prospect of data sharing? Or has there been any data sharing with those that have had some success in the basin?

I would characterize data sharing as informal.

There are no further questions at this time. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.