Q4 2013 Occidental Petroleum Corporation Earnings Conference Call
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THOMSON REUTERS STREETEVENTS EDITED TRANSCRIPT OXY - Q4 2013 Occidental Petroleum Corporation Earnings Conference Call EVENT DATE/TIME: JANUARY 30, 2014 / 3:00PM GMT OVERVIEW: Management discussed 4Q13 and 2013 results. THOMSON REUTERS STREETEVENTS | www.streetevents.com | Contact Us ©2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Thomson Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. 'Thomson Reuters' and the Thomson Reuters logo are registered trademarks of Thomson Reuters and its affiliated companies. JANUARY 30, 2014 / 3:00PM, OXY - Q4 2013 Occidental Petroleum Corporation Earnings Conference Call CORPORATE PARTICIPANTS Chris Stavros Occidental Petroleum Corporation - VP IR & Treasurer Steve Chazen Occidental Petroleum Corporation - President and CEO Vicki Hollub Occidental Petroleum Corporation - EVP - US Operations, Oxy Oil & Gas Willie Chiang Occidental Petroleum Corporation - President of Operation & Head of Midstream Business CONFERENCE CALL PARTICIPANTS Doug Terreson ISI Group - Analyst Doug Leggate BofA Merrill Lynch - Analyst Ed Westlake Credit Suisse - Analyst Arjun Murti Goldman Sachs - Analyst Faisel Khan Citigroup - Analyst Roger Read Wells Fargo Securities, LLC - Analyst PRESENTATION Operator Good morning and welcome to the Occidental Petroleum Corporation fourth quarter 2013 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Chris Stavros. Please go ahead. Chris Stavros - Occidental Petroleum Corporation - VP IR & Treasurer Thank you, Emily, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for participating in Occidental Petroleum's fourth quarter 2013 earnings conference call. On the call with us this morning from Houston are Steve Chazen, Oxy's President and Chief Executive Officer; Vicki Hollub, Executive Vice President of Oxy's US Oil and Gas Operations; Cynthia Walker, our Chief Financial Officer; Willie Chiang, Oxy's Vice President of Operations and head of our Midstream business; Bill Albrecht, President of Oxy's Oil and Gas in the Americas and Sandy Lowe, President of our International Oil and Gas Operations. We're going to change things up a bit this quarter and begin the call with comments from our CEO Steve Chazen who will review some of the achievements we realized last year with respect to the fundamentals of our business and our strategy and plan for 2014. Vicki Hollub will then provide a thorough discussion on the strategy and outlook for our operations in both the Permian Basin and California. In order to provide a little more time for discussion around our domestic oil and gas operations, we will not directly address our fourth-quarter results on the call. However, Cynthia Walker's detailed commentary on the fourth quarter, as well as forward-looking guidance items, can be found in the conference call slides sent to you following Vicki's remarks and beginning with slide 46. As a reminder, today's conference call contains certain projections and other forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Federal Securities laws. These statements are subject to the risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ from those expressed or implied in these statements and our filings. Our fourth-quarter 2013 earnings press release, the Investor Relations supplemental schedules, conference call 2 THOMSON REUTERS STREETEVENTS | www.streetevents.com | Contact Us ©2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Thomson Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. 'Thomson Reuters' and the Thomson Reuters logo are registered trademarks of Thomson Reuters and its affiliated companies. JANUARY 30, 2014 / 3:00PM, OXY - Q4 2013 Occidental Petroleum Corporation Earnings Conference Call presentation slides, as well as Cynthia's detailed commentary on the fourth quarter results have been posted and can be downloaded off of our website at www.oxy.com. I will now turn the call over to Steve Chazen. Steve, please go ahead. Steve Chazen - Occidental Petroleum Corporation - President and CEO Thank you, Chris. We just finished a successful year meeting or succeeding many of the goals we set out for ourselves and are looking to continue our performance into 2014. Let me give you a brief overview of the key 2013 highlights. We grew our domestic oil production by 11,000 barrels per day over 2012 to 266,000 a day. We exceeded our capital efficiency goals, reducing our drilling costs by 24% from the 2012 levels, reduced domestic operating costs by 17%. We added about 470 million barrels of reserve equivalents, achieving an overall replacement ratio of 169%. Our total costs incurred associated with those reserve adds were about $7.7 billion, resulting in an apparent finding and development cost of under $17. We increased our return on capital employed from 10.3% in 2012 to 12.2% in 2013. Turning now to some of the specifics of the key accomplishments of last year. As a result of our development program, we improved our capital efficiency by 24% domestically over 2012, which translates to about a $900 million reduction in capital for the wells drilled in 2013. Of this improvement 50% came from the Permian Basin, 25% from California and 25% from the rest of the domestic assets. We accomplished these improvements while successfully competing our program by drilling approximately what we had planned. We also reduced our domestic operating costs by 17%, or about $470 million, compared to 2012. About 48% of this improvement was Permian Basin, 46% was in California and the remainder was in the other domestic assets. While we focused on these efficiencies we also grew our domestic oil production by 11,000 barrels a day. With respect to reserves, we had a very successful year in growing the Company's reserve base by adding substantially more reserves than we produced, over 90% of which was added through organic development program. We ended the year based on a preliminary estimate with about 3.5 billion barrels of reserves which represent an all-time high for the Company. Our total Company reserve replacement ratio from all categories before disposition was about 169%, or about 479 million barrels of new reserves compared to 278 million barrels we produced during the year. In the United States our reserve replacement ratio was 190%. Replacement ratios to California properties in the Permian non-CO2 properties were similar to the overall ratio. Our reserve replacement ratio for liquids from all categories was 195% for the total Company and 228% domestically. This reflects our emphasis in oil drilling instead of gas. Our total costs incurred related to total reserve additions for the year on a preliminary basis were about $7.7 billion. Over the last several years we have built a large portfolio of growth-oriented assets in the United States. In 2013 we spent larger than normal portion of our investment dollars in development of these assets. Our organic reserve replacement for the year reflects the positive results of these development efforts. Our 2013 program, excluding acquisitions, replaced 168% of our domestic production with about 291 million barrels of reserves adds. In addition we transferred 115 million barrels approved undeveloped that proved developed category domestically as a result of the program. Our acquisitions were at a multi-year low of $550 million, providing reserve adds of 32 million barrels. At the end of the year we estimate that 73% of our total prove reserves were liquids, increasing from 72% in 2012. Of the total reserves about 70% were proved developed compared to 73% last year, 2012, that is. The increase in the share of the proved undeveloped reserves compared to last year was the result of reserves added at the Al Hosn Gas Project. We expect to move these reserves to proved developed category at the end of this year, once the initial production starts in the fourth quarter. Through the success of our drilling program and capital efficiency initiative, we lowered our finding and development costs over recent years. As a result, we expect our DD&A expense to be around $17.40 a barrel, only a small increase from the $17.10 in 2013. This is consistent with our expectation the DD&A rate of growth should flatten out as recent investments come online and finding and development cost come down. 3 THOMSON REUTERS STREETEVENTS | www.streetevents.com | Contact Us ©2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Thomson Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. 'Thomson Reuters' and the Thomson Reuters logo are registered trademarks of Thomson Reuters and its affiliated companies. JANUARY 30, 2014 / 3:00PM, OXY - Q4 2013 Occidental Petroleum Corporation Earnings Conference Call Success of our organic reserve additions and the efficiencies we have achieved in our operations, demonstrates the significant process we have made in turning the Company into a competitive domestic producer. One of our long-term goals domestically has been to achieve a 50% pre-tax margin after finding and development and cash operating costs so as to generate solid returns. We believe we are achieving that now and expect to continue to do so in the future. Consistent with what we have said, our focus in 2013 was to enhance shareholder value through our results. For this goal our program was heavily focused on growing our domestic oil production, improving our capital efficiency, that is, improving our finding and development costs and lowering our operating costs. We met or exceeded these goals and result have increased our return on capital to 12.2%, a significant improvement from the 10.3% of last year. That testament to the hard work and dedication of all of our employees.