Today, BOE Intel takes a look at some midcap Montney companies using our compare tools and activity maps. We chose a few Montney companies in the 40-100 mboe/d range.
Figures 1-3 takes a look at recent production trends for Birchcliff Energy, Paramount Resources, Advantage Energy, NuVista Energy and Hammerhead Energy. We have annotated some of the charts with commentary about what we see. We are only days away from getting June gross licensed production figures from BOE Intel for these companies, as well as the quarterly numbers from the companies over the next couple of weeks.
Figure 1 – Corporate Production
Notes:
- The only 2 producers from this list with growth in Q1 relative to Q4 were Hammerhead and Advantage. Paramount was close, essentially flat in the quarter.
Figure 2 – Corporate liquids production
Notes:
- Liquids weighting varies dramatically among these Montney companies. The highest liquids as a percentage of production belongs to Hammerhead (47%), followed by Paramount (45%), NuVista (41%), Birchcliff (14%), and Advantage (10%). Interestingly Hammerhead has the lowest total production of the 5 companies and yet has the 3rd most liquids production.
Figure 3 – Gross licensed production (monthly)
Notes:
- This shows monthly gross licensed production, which is a public data aggregation of all production on a per well basis for wells licensed to a company and assuming 100% working interest. It won’t line up perfectly with corporate production, but it will show trends well ahead of quarterly reports. The most recent month showing is May 2023, but June 2023 data is only days away for BOE Intel subscribers.
- Of particular note in this chart is the discrepancies in May production for these Montney players. The wildfires didn’t seem to have too much of an effect on Hammerhead and Birchcliff, while Paramount, Advantage and NuVista did have larger production curtailments in May. Advantage also had a planned turnaround at its Glacier Gas Plant, which we highlighted here.
Figure 4 – Operating netback (after hedging)
Notes:
- Not surprisingly, the companies with the higher liquids weightings have shown the highest operating netbacks over the most recent quarters. Leading the group with the highest operating netback currently is Hammerhead. Birchcliff and Advantage have seen a more substantial decline in operating netback over the last several quarters compared to those with higher liquids weighting.
Figure 5 – Well spuds (last 3 months)
Notes:
- The companies with a greater percentage of liquids (Paramount, NuVista, Hammerhead) have been more active over the last 3 months compared to the gassy peers (Birchcliff, Advantage). Some of this could be wildfire related or due to spring breakup conditions, or could simply be that those lower operating netbacks on a relative basis have slowed down capital budgets a little or introduced a little more caution.
- 2 of Birchcliff’s spuds are on the new Elmworth acreage, where the plan was to drill these as retention wells, but not bring on production in 2023. Another 3 were very recent, just over the last week.
- While all other spuds were for the Montney, included in Paramount’s 14 were 4 Duvernay spuds which are not included on the map in Figure 5 due to their location.
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