CALGARY, July 4, 2017 /CNW/ – Tourmaline Oil Corp. (TSX:TOU) (“Tourmaline” or the “Company”) is pleased to provide an update on its EP activities.
The Company is currently operating 10 drilling rigs and will ramp to the full 18 rig fleet during the first half of July. Frac operations are underway on 4 of the 8 pads drilled during spring break-up. Approximately 175 new wells will be tied-in during the second half of 2017, across all three core complexes.
Significant production curtailments on all three transportation systems utilized by the Company reduced June and quarterly average volumes from the record levels achieved in April and May. The Company is still expecting record average Q2 2017 production volumes in the 235,000-240,000 boepd range. The Company remains on track to comfortably achieve full-year 2017 production guidance of 240,000-260,000 boepd; Tourmaline anticipates reaching the 250,000 boepd production milestone during the second half of August 2017.
During June, there were zero days not affected by a production restriction in one or all of the Company’s three core complexes. The planned outages on TCPL and Spectra/Enbridge were both extended longer than originally estimated and the unplanned shutdown on the Alliance system further reduced monthly volumes. The simultaneous curtailments on Spectra and TCPL for 12 days in June reduced the Company’s usual ability to transfer gas volumes between systems mitigating the impact of a restriction on any one system. Tourmaline’s planned, own account shutdown and turnaround of the entire Peace River High oil complex, timed to coincide with the planned third-party outages in June, also took four days longer than estimated. Almost all of the shut-in volumes were back on-stream by the end of June.
Cash flow, capital spending and cash costs are better or as anticipated for the second quarter. The Company estimates that its first half EP program is balanced with available cash flows from the first six months and Tourmaline continues to execute a full-year EP capital budget equal to cash flow, generating annual production growth of approximately 30% in 2017. The Company will continue to pursue all opportunities within the EP portfolio to optimize already strong full-cycle returns.