Eagle Ford Shale Wells Coming Online At 700 to 1,000 Barrels Of Oil Per Day; Considered The Number 1 Priority For The President And CEO Of Carrizo Oil And Gas (CRZO)
August 17, 2011 - The Wall Street Transcript has just published 2011 Global Energy Review offering a timely review of the sector. This Special Report contains expert industry commentary through in-depth interviews with public company CEOs, Equity Analysts and Money Managers. Please find an excerpt below.
Recent Wall Street Transcript Special Reports.
Richard Hunter has bachelor's degrees in biology and geology and an M.S. in geology from The Florida State University, an MBA from Rice University, and eight years experience as a Geoscientist with Shell Oil. He managed the energy investment portfolio at Lighthouse Capital Management for 15 years and has been Carrizo's VP of Investor Relations since 2009.
S.P. Johnson IV has been President and CEO of Carrizo Oil & Gas, Inc., since founding the company in 1993. Previous to that, he worked for 15 years at Shell Oil in various E&P engineering roles. He has a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Colorado. Mr. Johnson is on the Board of Basic Energy Services (BES) and was a board Member of Pinnacle Gas Resources, Inc., until 2011.
TWST: Please start with a history and overview of Carrizo Oil And Gas.
Mr. Johnson: We started Carrizo in 1993 as a 3D seismic-driven exploration company in the onshore Gulf Coast, and we eventually started exploring in resource plays starting with the Barnett shale in 2003. After the Barnett shale, we moved into the Marcellus shale in 2008. And then, in a desire to get more involved in the oil area, we moved into the Eagle Ford shale and Niobrara in 2010. So those are our four main areas in the United States. The Barnett and the Marcellus are mostly gas, but the Eagle Ford and the Niobrara are mostly oil. We now are focused solely on drilling in oil and gas resource plays.
TWST: Are you looking to expand geographically, or will you continue to operate primarily within your current areas?
Mr. Johnson: We will certainly continue to grow within the areas where we already operate, but we are also interested in growing geographically. We're always trying to expand in the areas where we're having success. So we're trying to buy acreage right now primarily in the Eagle Ford and the Niobrara, a little bit in the Marcellus. There is really no acreage left to buy in the Barnett in the area where we're drilling, and then there are other areas in the country that have attractive-looking resource plays where we're trying to put acreage positions together.
TWST: What do you see as your biggest opportunity?
Mr. Johnson: Right now, accelerating the Eagle Ford shale is our number one opportunity. We've had excellent results with wells that come online at 700 to 1,000 barrels of oil per day. We have very easy logistics in terms of permitting pipelines, drilling, fracking and easy takeaway capacity so far with gas and natural gas liquids, and a very uniform reservoir across thousands and thousands of acres.
TWST: Between the natural gas portion and the oil portion of your business, what are the differences in the market?
Mr. Johnson: It's always easier to find natural gas because most of the oil has been found. And gas is cleaner. It's much easier to operate. If the prices were equivalent, we would always rather produce natural gas. But right now, oil is trading at such a premium to natural gas, when you compare the price per energy equivalent, everybody is trying to get oilier because you can make so much more profit out of the same amount of energy.
TWST: Do you currently operate internationally?
Mr. Johnson: We have one project in the U.K. North Sea that is a discovery our geologists generated and that we promoted out to three other companies who put up the money and drill the discovery well. And now we're going forward with development of it, and we have a 15% working interest. It should come online early next year.
TWST: I assume it's a very capital-intensive industry.
Mr. Johnson: It's very capital intensive. Sometimes it takes six months of spending money before you see any cash flow at all. And because you're constantly drilling and fracture-stimulating wells, you're just getting deeper and deeper into the hole until the cash flow and the debt capacity comes up. So we generally look at it as being six months of no money before you start seeing any real returns.
Mr. Hunter: That very large requirement of start-up capital to initiate a drilling program is one of the barriers to entry in this entire industry. If we're going to be drilling a single well in the Eagle Ford, it's going to cost us a minimum of $7.5 million to drill and complete that well. We're not going to see a penny of return for as much as six months after the initiation of drilling the well. So that capital has to come from somewhere.
Mr. Johnson: For instance, in Pennsylvania, where we knew the returns are going to be more like a year to two years out, we did a joint venture with an Indian company, Reliance Industries, where they put up a lot of that early capital and that helped us get through that period.
The remainder of this 78 page 2011 Global Energy Review can be immediately viewed by purchasing online.
The Wall Street Transcript is a unique service for investors and industry researchers - providing fresh commentary and insight through verbatim interviews with CEOs and research analysts. This exclusive issue is available by calling (212) 952-7433 or via The Wall Street Transcript Online.
The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse the views of any interviewees nor does it make stock recommendations.
For Information on subscribing to The Wall Street Transcript, please call 800/246-7673