Chesapeake Energy Corporation (NASDAQ:CHK) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Nick Dell’Osso: Sure Umang. Yes. So, macro, start with that. We’ve got a lot of uncertainty in front of us here with winter just starting. And storage levels have been high — relatively high throughout 2023. They look a little bit better today than they did a couple of months ago, but the big variable in front of us now is the winter. What we’re all excited about in the industry is the step change that will come to the fundamentals when we have the incremental export capacity come online. We still think that happens around the end of 2024. We will watch that very, very closely. That’s the signal we’re really focused on from a macro perspective is will we have that connectivity to markets that are underserved, such that there is a call on US gas.

If that happens, we believe we have an important asset to meet that call in the Haynesville, and we would expect to add a rig if that looks like it’s coming in line with that projection. But to be clear, our $1.6 billion number that we gave you as an approximation for our 2024 CapEx which albeit it’s very early to be giving you that number. That’s an early estimate, and we’ll set a budget still as we go through the end of the year here and get ready to start next year as we really see where winter plays out. That would assume that we bring a rig on in the second half of the year in the Haynesville. So, if that macro view changes, and we don’t believe that LNG is going to come online timely or the storage environment changes because we have either a really cold or a really warm winter, we could certainly change that answer.

But as of now, we’re thinking about a business that would start off the year exactly where it is today and that has the flexibility to add a rig in the second half of the year. And so the starting point number we’ve given you for capital would assume we do just that. But just to reiterate, we have all the flexibility in the world to change our answer around whether or not that rig comes on in the second half of the year or any other changes to our capital program with plenty of flexibility, and we can be very responsive to what we believe the fundamentals are asking our industry to deliver in the way of supply.

Umang Choudhary: That’s very helpful. Thank you. And as a follow-up question, I wanted to understand a little bit about the midstream setup in the Haynesville. The production in the Haynesville has been declining and — but you also have made progress in terms of adding more capacity in the Haynesville. So, do you feel like you have sufficient capacity as we look to 2025, to group molecules in the Haynesville. That’s question number one. And can you also remind us on the progress on the Momentum pipeline? Is it on track to come online in the fourth quarter of next year?

Nick Dell’Osso: Yes, let me answer the first part of that, and then I’ll have Mohit talk about momentum. As for capacity, we feel very comfortable we can deliver what we’re planning for here. Remember that 2024 volumes in the Haynesville will be lower than we were in 2022 and 2023, where at the — during 2022 and the beginning of 2023, we experienced some of those bottlenecks. We’ve removed those bottlenecks so we can restore production back to those previous levels with that incremental rig, we feel very good about that and feel very good that if we ever chose to grow beyond that in the future, we have the relationships and the infrastructure in place to be able to do it.