Comstock Resources, Inc. (NYSE:CRK) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Charles Meade: Got it. And then I guess we can do the work ourselves. But between those 2 numbers, we should be able to figure out when that ownership reverts or rather where they go from whatever, 80% to 30%, but we’ll do that work offline. Second question, I want to ask again about the Western Haynesville, obviously, you guys are — this is a big effort for you guys. When I look at your own results, you guys are — clearly, you guys can put up these IPs in the mid- to high 30s or even I think you’ve had 1 or 2 over 40. So I think that aspect is being derisked. But there’s other important data points, which are the D&C costs. I wonder if you could share what your — maybe not where you are now, but what your target D&C cost is on these wells? And then perhaps what the pressure drawdown is like over time, if you want to share any of that?

Miles Allison: Well, I’ll start out and then I’ll leave it to Dan. I think, number 1, we’re not rigging the system with a high IP rate that’s cut in half. The second that you don’t need an IP rate. I mean these IP rates are real rates that we’re flowing these wells at. I think that’s number 1, which that’s unusual. Number 2, I think the EURs, as we said, in the wells that we’re drilling, I mean, they may be double what the EUR is in a typical legacy well. So those are big game changers. Number 3, I think the cost of any exploration play or exploitation play for the first 7 wells is going to be a little higher than normal. We always said, Charles, you take the first 7 wells in the Haynesville/Bossier in the legacy footprint backend in 2008, and you need a big barf bag because they look terrible.

I think these 7 wells will make a smile. Dan already said that he’s cut the drilling days down by at least 20 days and the costs have come down on these wells. And we — I think we stated in our last conference call that we think that the Western Haynesville wells as is where it is today or fairly competitive, if not equal to, the legacy wells that we’re drilling. I think the thing that you don’t know and we won’t know for a while is what the type curve really looks like when these wells really start falling over and if this bottle hole pressures will maintain where they are today. That’s why we say these wells are top of class because out of the 1,000 wells we drilled in the core and the Western Haynesville, these are some of the best wells we’ve ever touched.

So Dan, do you want to comment anything?

Daniel Harrison: Totally correct there. So I’ll just kind of comment a little bit on the D&C cost. So we have — this is a totally kind of a different casing design down here than what we have up in the core. It just takes a lot more days to drill the vertical part of the hole. And basically, the laterals get a lot more heat. We’ve made a lot of headway of the first 7 wells we have produced and we targeted the Bossier, not entirely due to temperature, but partially due to temperature we’ve gotten a lot better at drilling at the higher temps. We’ve got — of the next — I think we’ve got 10 wells targeted to turn to sales next year. 8 of those are going to be in the Haynesville, 2 will be in the Bossier. So we are going to turn our focus to that.

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