Ranger Energy Services, Inc. (NYSE:RNGR) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Stuart Bodden: I don’t think we found, a situation where we can kind of model it with any kind of accuracy. But again, Donovan, I think I guess, I would just say a couple of things. Generally, within the first year or less, after a well has been drilled. We typically go back — we the industry typically goes back in and put that well on artificial lift. So, I do think that that happens relatively quickly and then every year or two, you tend to go back into the wells to do well service work. I think the other thing, I would just sort of point to is, if you kind of look at on the high-specification rig segment through this year, hours have really been quite steady all through the year despite the fact that drilling rig count has dropped pretty substantially.

So again, I think we kind of talked about it earlier but I think we feel like being really exposed and oriented towards this production-focused business model and making sure that we’re keeping existing wells online just makes us a lot more resilient through the cycle.

Donovan Schafer: Okay. That’s helpful. And on the plugging and abandoning, kind of, opportunity is something I haven’t — I need to kind of brush up on I’m trying to remember the state of legislation around there. So just has there been any more updates or guidance clarifications or anything around potential to monetize credits for reducing methane emissions from going back and doing plugging and abandoning whether at the federal or the state level or just kind of the current state of affairs for the subsidized or statutory kind of side of that equation would be great?

Stuart Bodden: So on the P&A side there’s a lot of different ways to kind of to start to answer the question, but I’ll sort of start. As you know there’s a lot of money that was in the inflation Reduction Act that was targeted to the orphan well program and that federal money that ultimately gets distributed by the states. I think what we’re seeing is kind of very early days some of that state money is actually showing up in the industry in the form of former bids. So we’re — we’ve seen kind of one of the early ones that have come out in the last several weeks. So on the orphan well program as it relates to the inflation Reduction Act I would say that money is just now starting to come in. I think what we are seeing on kind of a broader trend is that certainly our larger customers feel like this that they’re really developing their own P&A programs outside the IRA because they feel like that that’s part of their ESG effort.

And so a lot of our work right now on the P&A side is actually directly with E&Ps outside of the Inflation Reduction Act. And I guess the third thing I would say is, I think there’s several people that are trying to think through does it make sense to buy a big package of wells do P&A on them and then take the carbon offsets. I’m not sure there is a business model that has sort of developed that is “the winning way” yet, but we’re seeing lots of different people trying to piece that together. So hopefully that answers the question Donovan.

Donovan Schafer: Yes. No that does. And actually if I can squeeze just one more in about kind of I’m curious if there are any trends to be mindful of like in terms of approaches to workovers or artificial lift installations that are either — either hurt or benefit the economics for work the High-Spec workover rigs. Like think about if there’s more use of electric submersible pumps versus displacement pump jacks or something. Any kind of trends there moving positively or negatively?