The ConocoPhillips Corp. had an active fourth quarter, advancing its global liquefied natural gas strategy through its expansion in Qatar and making final investment decisions at its LNG project at Port Arthur and its federally sanctioned exploration and production Willow Project on the North Slope of Alaska.
“Last spring we further strengthened our greenhouse gas emissions intensity targets to a 50-60 percent reduction from a 2016 baseline and we were recently awarded the Gold Standard Pathway designation by the Oil and Gas Initiative Methane Partnership 2.0,” Chairman-CEO Ryan Lance said from Houston. “We see a bit of deceleration in the growth rate coming from the U.S., driven by a number of factors, but we’re still growing in the Lower 48.
“We peg that growth at between 300,000 to 500,000 barrels of oil equivalent. That’s total liquids. So we still see some growth coming from the U.S. shale primarily driven out of the Permian Basin but more modest relative to last year’s growth.
“Relative to our expected Lower 48, we’re in that same kind of range, low to single-digit growth rates on a similar activity level like we entered into 2023 with,” Lance said. “So we don’t intend to be ramping our program in the Lower 48 and we are coming into the year to a level similar to what we exited 2023 at.”
ConocoPhillips Executive Vice President-Chief Financial Officer Bill Bullock said during his company’s fourth quarter earnings call that its production of 1,902,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day represented 4 percent underlying growth year over year.
“This was consistent with our full-year 2023 underlying growth rate of 4 percent,” Bullock said. “Fourth quarter Lower 48 production averaged 1,086,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, which represented 9 percent underlying growth year over year.
“We produced 750,000 from the Permian, 211,000 from the Eagle Ford and 110,000 from the Bakken.”
Bullock said fourth quarter capital expenditures totaled $2.9 billion including $573 million for longer-cycle projects.
“Full-year capital expenditures were $11.2 billion including $2 billion for longer-cycle projects,” he said. “We delivered $11 billion to shareholders in 2023, $2.5 billion the fourth quarter.
“This was via $1.1 billion in share buybacks and $1.4 billion in ordinary dividends and variable return of cash payments. We ended the year with cash and short-term investments of $6.9 billion as well as $1 billion in long-term investments.”
Bullock said 2024 production will be 1.91-1.95 million barrels of oil equivalent per day with 2-4-percent growth being balanced between the Lower 48 states and international operations.
“Our full-year forecast includes turnaround impacts of 25,000 to 30,000 barrels per day, which is about 10,000 higher than in 2023,” he said.
