Chevron Corporation (NYSE:CVX) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Mike Wirth: Yes. Maybe I’ll finish on — I think the second question is about overall production, and the first was about Permian. So our outlook for 2023 at $80 is flat to up 3%, so that post between 3 million and 3.1 million barrels a day. There’s a modest adjustment that relative to our Investor Day guidance. A couple of things driving that, some project deferrals like Mad Dog 2, which we thought would start up in 2022 and now looks like a 2023 startup. We’ve got some downtime, plans downtime that shifted from 2022 to 2023. And then our Permian growth would be a little bit lower in 2023. A couple of things. One, in 2022, we had the benefit of a lot of prior DUCs that had been sitting that came online and it boost early production in 2022, a little bit more.

And then we also are re-optimizing some of our development plans to factor in some of the things we continue to learn relative to interactions between wells and benches, how we space laterals and do single or multi-bench development. So our revised plan will have some deeper targets, a few more rig moves and a few more single bench developments, all of which brings that pace down a little bit. So that’s kind of at the highest level, what is behind the production numbers. We’ll talk about that more when we see you guys in a month here. And maybe I’ll stop there, because I did cover the Permian as part of that. Thanks, Devin. Katie, we can go the next question. Katie, can you hear us?

Operator: We’ll take our next question from Neil Mehta with Goldman Sachs.

Neil Mehta: Yes. Good morning team and congrats here on a good year. Hey, Mike, I guess the first question I have for you is around global gas. And maybe you can talk about how you’re seeing the market. There’s obviously been a tremendous amount of volatility and remind us again how you’re positioned from a contracted versus spot position? And then I have a follow-up on gas as well in the Eastern Med.

Mike Wirth: Okay. Well, high level, we certainly have seen a very unusual and volatile year in 2022, which has settled out here as we’ve come into the winter, primarily as we’ve seen a bit milder winter in the northern hemisphere than is typical. And as in Europe, the successful build of inventories for this year and the reduction of industrial demand have both resulted in an outlook that is less dire for the European economies, than it may have looked like several months ago. And so I think the market reflects all of that. You also have the fact that China has been — the economy has been slow throughout the year, which is — looks to be turning around. And so I think it’s good that markets have calmed. I mean the high prices really were creating a lot of stresses out there that are not good.

And I hope we see these prices stay in a more moderate range as we enter 2023. Our posture is largely as we’ve described it before, we’re primarily contracted on oil index pricing, biggest piece, obviously, out of Australia. We do have — we ran really well in Australia last year, a record number of cargoes and so there were some spot cargoes in the mix out of Australia, out of West Africa, we’ve got a little more spot exposure in Angola and now with Equatorial Guinea as well. But think of us as primarily oil-linked. And we’ve got some sensitivities, I think that Pierre has put out there, and we’ve reiterated some of those in the guidance today that should help you model these things based on your assumptions on gas prices.

Neil Mehta: Thanks, Mike. And that’s the follow-up. You have a large gas position in the Eastern Mediterranean, following the noble acquisition with Leviathan and Tamar and some discoveries out there as well. So how do you think about prosecuting that asset? Where does it fall in terms of prioritization? And how big can it be?

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