ConocoPhillips Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 7, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: ConocoPhillips delivered 2.39 MMBOE/d in Q2, generated $4.7 billion in cash flow from operations, and returned $2.2 billion to shareholders via buybacks and dividends.
  • Positive Sentiment: Integration of the Marathon Oil acquisition is complete, with run-rate synergies exceeding $1 billion and over $1 billion in additional cost and margin opportunities identified, underpinning a raised $5 billion asset-sale target.
  • Positive Sentiment: The company expects a $7 billion free cash flow inflection by 2029 at $70 WTI, driven by its leading Lower 48 inventory and high-return LNG and Alaska project startups.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Full-year guidance remains unchanged, with the production midpoint reiterated, capital and operating cost ranges maintained, and about 45% of full-year CFO slated for shareholder distributions.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
ConocoPhillips Q2 2025
00:00 / 00:00

Transcript Sections

Skip to Participants
Operator

Welcome to the Second Quarter twenty twenty five ConocoPhillips Earnings Conference Call. My name is Liz, and I will be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. During the question and answer session, if you have a question, please press 11 on your touchtone phone.

Operator

I will now turn the call over to Guy Baber, Vice President, Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Guy Baber
Guy Baber
VP - IR at ConocoPhillips

Thank you, Liz, and welcome everyone to our second quarter twenty twenty five earnings conference call. On the call today are several members of the ConocoPhillips leadership team, including Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO Andy O'Brien, Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President of Strategy and Commercial Nick Olds, Executive Vice President of Lower forty eight and Global HSE and Kirk Johnson, Executive Vice President of Global Operations and Technical Functions. Ryan and Andy will kick off the call with opening remarks, after which the team will be available for your questions. For Q and A, we will be taking one question per caller. A few quick reminders today.

Guy Baber
Guy Baber
VP - IR at ConocoPhillips

First, along with the release, we published supplemental financial materials and a slide presentation, which you can now find on the Investor Relations website. Also during this call, we will make forward looking statements based on current expectations. Actual results may differ due to factors noted in today's release and in our periodic SEC filings. We will make reference to some non GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the nearest corresponding GAAP measure can be found in today's release and on our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Ryan.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

Thanks, Guy, and thank you to everyone for joining our second quarter twenty twenty five earnings conference call. Starting with results and outlook, we delivered another strong execution quarter, once again exceeding the top end of our production guidance range. We reiterated the midpoint of our full year production guidance even with the announced agreement to sell our Anadarko Basin asset for CAD1.3 billion. And our capital spending and operating cost guidance ranges, both of which we lowered last quarter remain unchanged. On return of capital, we may remain on track to distribute about 45% of our full year CFO to shareholders this year.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

That's consistent with our prior guidance and our long term track record. The bottom line, we're operating well, we're delivering on our plan and we're well positioned for a strong second half of the year with clear free cash flow tailwinds including lower capital spending. Turning to the Marathon Oil acquisition, I'm pleased to announce that the asset integration is now complete and that we've significantly outperformed our acquisition case. We added more high quality, low cost supply resource, we're achieving more synergies, we're delivering a more efficient Lower 48 development program and we've already announced more asset sales than we guided at the time of the transaction announcement. While these are all significant achievements, we're not stopping there.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

Given our integration success, which builds upon other successful transactions, as well as our recent implementation of a new company wide enterprise resource system, we continue to drive for improvement across every level of the organization. As part of this effort, we've identified more than £1,000,000,000 of additional cost reduction and margin enhancement opportunities. Now to be clear, that's on top of the more than 1,000,000,000 of Marathon synergies we've already expected to realize. Additionally, now that we've exceeded our 2,000,000,000 asset sales objective ahead of schedule, we're raising our total disposition target to 5,000,000,000. Collectively, these initiatives will strengthen our ability to generate strong returns on and of capital through the cycles and enhance our long term value proposition.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

And that's a value proposition that's already differentiated, not only relative to our sector, but relative to the broader S and P 500 as well. We believe we have the highest quality asset base in our peer space. Our global portfolio is deep, durable and diverse, and we're recognized as having the most advantaged U. S. Inventory position in the sector.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

We believe this advantage will become increasingly apparent as The U. S. Shale industry continues to mature and investors are forced to more clearly sort through what we call the inventory haves and have nots. We are a clear leader in The US inventory haves. In addition, we're uniquely investing in our high quality portfolio, specifically in our longer cycle projects in LNG and Alaska to deliver strong returns and a compelling multi year free cash flow growth profile.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

Assuming a $70 per barrel WTI price environment, we expect the major projects we're currently progressing in combination with the additional cost and margin enhancements we just announced to drive a $7,000,000,000 free cash flow inflection by 2029. That would almost double the consensus free cash flow expectation for the entire company this year. Now with that, let me turn the call over to Andy to cover our second quarter performance, 2025 guidance and strategic objectives in more detail.

Andy O’Brien
Andy O’Brien
CFO & SVP - Strategy & Commercial at ConocoPhillips

Thanks, Ryan. Starting with our second quarter performance, as Ryan mentioned, we had another quarter of strong execution across the portfolio. We produced 2,391,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, once again exceeding the high end of our production guidance. In the Lower 48, production averaged 1,508,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. Alaska and International production averaged 883,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day as we successfully completed turnarounds in Norway and Qatar.

Andy O’Brien
Andy O’Brien
CFO & SVP - Strategy & Commercial at ConocoPhillips

Regarding our second quarter financials, we generated $1.42 per share in adjusted earnings and $4,700,000,000 of CFO. We had a $1,500,000,000 working capital headwind, effectively offsetting the equivalent size tailwind we realized last quarter. Capital expenditures were $3,300,000,000 slightly down quarter on quarter. We returned $2,200,000,000 to our shareholders, including $1,200,000,000 in buybacks and $1,000,000,000 in ordinary dividends. Through the first half of this year, we've returned $4,700,000,000 to our shareholders, about 45% of our CFO, consistent with our full year guidance and long term track record.

Andy O’Brien
Andy O’Brien
CFO & SVP - Strategy & Commercial at ConocoPhillips

We ended the quarter with cash and short term investments of $5,700,000,000 plus $1,100,000,000 in long term liquid investments. Turning to our outlook. For full year production guidance, we have narrowed the range and reiterated the guidance midpoint, even after adjusting for the Anadarko sale of approximately 40,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, which is expected to close at the beginning of the fourth quarter. Our capital spend and cost guidance ranges, both of which we reduced last quarter, are unchanged. We now expect our full year effective corporate tax rate to be in the mid to high 30% range, excluding one time items, lower than we previously guided due to geographical mix.

Andy O’Brien
Andy O’Brien
CFO & SVP - Strategy & Commercial at ConocoPhillips

And we now expect a total full year deferred tax benefit of about $05,000,000,000 primarily reflecting the positive impacts from the One Big Beautiful Bill. In the second half of the year, we expect free cash flow tailwinds in the form of higher APLNG distributions, cash tax benefits and lower capital spending. Further guidance details can be found on our earnings slide deck. Turning now to our strategic updates. As Ryan noted, we have completed the marathon asset integration and are realizing comprehensive outperformance against our acquisition case.

Andy O’Brien
Andy O’Brien
CFO & SVP - Strategy & Commercial at ConocoPhillips

We're delivering everything we said and much more. First, we've upgraded our low cost supply resource estimate by 25%. While we're most attracted to Mouton's significant Eagle Ford and Bakken positions, both of which are every bit as good as we expected and delivering excellent well results, the majority of the increase has been driven by the Permian, where our resource estimate has approximately doubled versus the initial estimate. The second point I would highlight, we have significantly outperformed our initial synergy guidance. At the time of the transaction announcement, we guided $500,000,000 of annual synergies.

Andy O’Brien
Andy O’Brien
CFO & SVP - Strategy & Commercial at ConocoPhillips

With our steady state capital development program achieved and critical system cutovers now in the rearview mirror, we are on a glide path to realize more than $1,000,000,000 of run rate synergies by the end of the year. In addition, we've identified over $1,000,000,000 of one time benefits, largely cash tax related. While we don't count this as a synergy, it's real value and a material benefit to our company. The third point I'd highlight: we brought the power of our more efficient and steady state development program to the combined portfolio. At the time of the transaction announcement, we highlighted our ability to more efficiently develop Marathon's acreage given our size and scale advantage, and ability to level load our program versus Marathon's practice of ramping activity up and down.

Andy O’Brien
Andy O’Brien
CFO & SVP - Strategy & Commercial at ConocoPhillips

We've now achieved optimized level of steady state activity, and we're delivering more combined production with 30% fewer rigs and frac crews in comparison to the pre transaction pro form a activity levels. And finally, with the announced Anadarko sale, we've now signed over $2,500,000,000 of dispositions within nine months of the transaction close, beating our $2,000,000,000 target well ahead of schedule. Given our growth in recent years and implementation of our new company wide ERP system, we are taking the opportunity for further cost and margin improvements across the entire company. We've identified more than $1,000,000,000 of opportunities that we expect to realize on a run rate basis by the 2026. All of this is in addition to the $1,000,000,000 of marathon synergies we previously discussed that we expect to realize on a run rate basis by the end of this year.

Andy O’Brien
Andy O’Brien
CFO & SVP - Strategy & Commercial at ConocoPhillips

These additional improvements will be wide ranging, encompassing cost reductions across our SG and A, operating costs and transportation costs, as well as margin enhancement through commercial opportunities. All in, including the math and synergies, we expect to drive over $2,000,000,000 of run rate improvements by the end of next year. In addition to furthering our cost reduction initiatives, we are more than doubling our asset sales target to $5,000,000,000 which we also expect to achieve by the end of next year. We see a clear opportunity to further high grade our portfolio and accelerate value realization of assets that are not currently competing for capital. So to wrap up, we continue to execute well operationally, financially and across our strategic initiatives.

Andy O’Brien
Andy O’Brien
CFO & SVP - Strategy & Commercial at ConocoPhillips

We are well positioned for the second half of the year with clear free cash flow tailwinds and we continue to find ways to enhance our differentiated long term investment thesis. That concludes our prepared remarks. I'll now turn it over to the operator to start the Q and A.

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. In the interest of time, we ask that you limit yourself to one question. If you have a question, please press star one 1 on your touchdown phone. Our Our first question comes from Neil Mehta with Goldman Sachs.

Neil Mehta
Neil Mehta
Head - Americas Natural Resources Equity Research at Goldman Sachs

Good morning, good afternoon, Ryan, Andy, team. Really appreciate the incremental disclosure and love the slide seven. So, Ryan, maybe we could start there, which is, you know, if you look at street numbers at around $60 to $70 WTI, you're generating close to $8,000,000,000 of free cash flow this year. So, if you add six to seven, you're kind of closer to 14, which implies by 29, a 12% free cash flow yield. So first, wanted to just check the math on and make sure that we're not missing any pieces around it.

Neil Mehta
Neil Mehta
Head - Americas Natural Resources Equity Research at Goldman Sachs

And then to the extent that is the right framework, which is a great prize in a couple of years, the pushback might be you got to wait for it. And so, Ryan, maybe your perspective on, hey, with every year you derisk towards that free cash flow number as capital intensity improves. So you don't necessarily have to wait to 2029 would be a theory, but it would be just your perspective on all that.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

Yeah, thanks Neil. I'll go to the head of the class here. Math is pretty good. Look, yeah, we're working pretty hard as you mentioned the numbers fit exactly where we're thinking about in that $60 to $70 range. We'll add about $7,000,000,000 of free cash flow between now and 2029.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

I mean, don't have to wait till 2029. Some of that's coming through the about a third or so is coming through the LNG channel and there's going to be consistent startups starting next year with Qatar, one of the trains in Qatar, 27 with Port Arthur, 28 with another train in Cutter and then '29 with Willow. So all of that's coming, everything's on track and you're right, it nearly doubles our current consensus free cash flow that I said in my opening remarks. And I think this is a trajectory and things that are coming that are unique in the business. There's no other E and P that I think can match what's coming for us, including the integrated majors.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

So I think we're unique in this space. We've been leaning in and making these investments that are very competitive in the portfolio, low cost of supply opportunities for the company that are gonna contribute to our growth and development for decades to come. And I would say too that it does not include the inventory advantage we currently have in the Lower 48, a very deep and Tier one inventory that we have and where we're constructive in the macro going long term. And if the call for shale production starts to come up because where is the supply coming to meet the growing demand that we believe is gonna be there. This doesn't even include what we could do to lean into our Lower 48 a little bit more.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

We haven't because the call hasn't been there to date. So we're growing at a bit more modest rate, but we're taking advantage of the integration, we're taking advantage of the synergies. I remind people we haven't added a rig in three, four years. So we're just continuing to grow our Lower 48 just through the efficiency in the channel. So none of that even includes what we could do pending what the call is for unconventional production going forward.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

So no, your math's good, Neil. We're excited about the opportunities for the company.

Operator

Our next question comes from Arun Jayaram with JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

Arun Jayaram
Research Analyst at JP Morgan Chase & Co

Yes, good morning, good afternoon team. Ryan, I was wondering if you could unpack the $1,000,000,000 cost reduction and margin optimization plan, which looks to be a new wrinkle in the update. You mentioned the ERP system integration. I was wondering if you could talk about what are some of the drivers of the $1,000,000,000 And are you doing anything at the organizational level to reengineer kind of your operating structure?

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

Yes, no, Arun, it's going to touch all pieces of company. There's some workforce centralization, some things that we've learned over the last three to four years with all the transactions that we've done that we're going to be implementing kind of globally throughout the company. So there's a piece of G and A built into this. There's utilizing the scale and scope of the company to drive some lease operating expense improvements as well, things that we're doing contractually, things that we've captured in the Lower 48 and understand from an efficiency perspective that we can drive throughout the whole company. As we've grown our scale, we also see opportunities in transportation and processing and that's going to show up as expense reduction and margin expansion through realized price improvement commercially.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

I'd say about 80% of it sits within the G and A, LOE, T and P just expense reductions, 20% of it sits in that kind of margin expansion bucket. And I would tell you, none of this includes capital sort of things. We don't count that in our synergy estimates. We're just talking about stuff that'll flow through the bottom line and changes that we need to make as a result of some of the technologies we're deploying and the size, scale and scope of the company through the inorganic expansions that we've had over the three to four years. And it's with that behind us now time for us to get the whole company running, taking advantage of stuff that we've invested in over the last few years.

Operator

Our next question comes from Steve Richardson with Evercore ISI.

Stephen Richardson
Senior Managing Director at Evercore

Thank you. Appreciate you're probably not going tell us what's for sale, Ryan, in terms of this meaningfully increased divestiture target. But perhaps you can give us some perspectives on the acquisition market from the sell side and maybe just talk about the types of assets and I'm sure you're intently focused on cost of supply in terms of the high grading, but maybe you could talk just sort of asset types and that process and the confidence on that higher target.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

Yeah, no, thanks, Steve. I think we've described to you and others that are on the call and we go through pretty rigorous exercise every year. We've kind of come out of the back end of our planning exercise that ramps up during the summer months. And through that process, we look at every asset in the portfolio and we look for the ones that are competing for capital and those that aren't competing for capital. And we tell our teams for the assets that are on the outside looking in a little bit, maybe there's different technologies we can deploy, different ways to think about it, different learnings from across the company.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

We give them some time to see if they can compete for capital long term. If they don't, then they migrate to a different list. And look, resource rich in a resource scarce world today. So that's what I think we were pleasantly surprised with the Anadarko Basin. Know We there's an example that wasn't going to compete for capital in the portfolio.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

We're getting plenty of North American natural gas production from our assets in North America. Just wasn't going to compete for capital as we integrated that asset into the company. And we were pretty pleased with the price that we got. So as we scrubbed the portfolio and think about it going forward with the remainder of this year and through 2026, we just felt like we see the assets that are out there and that aren't competing for capital and we think it's going to be a reasonable market to be selling into, which is what gave us confidence to increase the target to $5,000,000,000 And we've already surpassed our $2,000,000,000 target as Andy described in his remarks today with about 2,500,000,000 sold through this point in time.

Operator

Our next question comes from Doug Leggate with Wolfe Research.

Doug Leggate
MD & Senior Research Analyst at Wolfe Research

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Ryan, amidst all these incredibly positive updates, hate to ask such an asinine question as cash tax, but I'm going to make Andy Earnest crust today. And you've a $500,000,000 incremental deferred for '25. Obviously, there's a lot of moving parts with the M and A, the marathon and obviously asset sales and so on.

Doug Leggate
MD & Senior Research Analyst at Wolfe Research

What is the sustainable deferred tax visibility that you have for the Lower 48 at this point, if you're able to offer any color beyond 2025?

Andy O’Brien
Andy O’Brien
CFO & SVP - Strategy & Commercial at ConocoPhillips

Hey, Doug, it's Andy. Yeah, you're to make me on my stripes for the first question. There's quite a few moving parts to tax this quarter. Maybe I'll just try to cover them step by step and try and get everything covered in tax in one question here. So just to clear it, because I think some of this gets conflated in terms of what's the one big beautiful bill impacting, what isn't impacting.

Andy O’Brien
Andy O’Brien
CFO & SVP - Strategy & Commercial at ConocoPhillips

So just starting with the quarter, in terms of our 2Q effective tax rate, we were lower than we guided last quarter. And we've actually reduced the full year effective tax rate to the mid-30s for the rest of the year. So that was purely due to a mix where we had domestic commodity prices relative to international markets were a bit higher than we forecast. And that resulted in a higher mix of income from our lower tax jurisdictions like The US. So that's probably the first thing that jumps out to people is the effective tax rate.

Andy O’Brien
Andy O’Brien
CFO & SVP - Strategy & Commercial at ConocoPhillips

The second thing going on to the deferred taxes, we saw a larger than expected deferred tax benefit during the second quarter. That had nothing to do with the new tax bill. That was largely due to one off discrete items that we really don't forecast. And then getting probably to the meat of your question in terms of first of all the expected benefits, we covered this in our prepared remarks, but this year we think the One Big Beautiful Bill will have about a half a billion dollar impact to us and that's primarily due just simply to the bonus depreciation rate going from 40% to 100%. Now of course that's going to carry on into 2026 and we'll continue to benefit from that bonus depreciation.

Andy O’Brien
Andy O’Brien
CFO & SVP - Strategy & Commercial at ConocoPhillips

But specifically to get into numbers at this point, it's a little bit too early and I think you helped answer the question for me in terms of why we've got to land exactly where the CapEx is, what's happening with which assets are being disposed of. But what we do know is that it's going to be a tailwind for us for next year.

Operator

Our next question comes from Lloyd Byrne with Jefferies.

Lloyd Byrne
Managing Director - Equity Research at Jefferies LLC

Hey, Ryan, Andy. How are you guys? I think that 30% fewer rigs and frac crews actually equates to almost a 100% of what Marathon is running at the time of the deal is very impressive. But let me just I guess I'll ask my question about the LNG and kind of the downstream strategy and just kind of what you're expecting from regasification sales deals going forward and then how do we expect that to contribute over the next few years?

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

Yeah, I'll maybe start and let Andy jump in on the LNG side. But you stuck in two for one there. Good job, Doug or Lloyd, you're good there. Look, yeah, I think we're pretty impressed with what Nick and his team have done with the integration in Marathon. But you're right, we've effectively eliminated their 10 rig program and not only delivered the pro form a production between the two companies, but growing the production as well.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

So I think Nick's team is really hitting on all the cylinders and we're really pleased with the success we've had in the aggressive way that they've tackled that program as well. I can let Andy talk a little bit about the LNG side.

Andy O’Brien
Andy O’Brien
CFO & SVP - Strategy & Commercial at ConocoPhillips

Sure. I think on the LNG side, you're probably specifically referring to some of the stuff that we've announced this quarter where we've added another 1.5 MTPA of regas capacity at Dunkirk in France. And we also executed an SPA with an Asian buyer. And what I'm particularly pleased about is with those two announcements, we've now effectively placed the entire five ms TPA from Port Arthur. So going forward, we're now at a point where we're continuing to have conversations both on the off take side of things and on the placement. But everything is tracking really well. We've placed everything we have to date and now we're looking basically to the next steps. What I can say in that space is that things certainly aren't slowing down, both in terms of opportunities for more off take and conversations with customers in Europe and Asia. Probably a bit of a watch this space.

Andy O’Brien
Andy O’Brien
CFO & SVP - Strategy & Commercial at ConocoPhillips

Hopefully we'll have more to talk about in coming quarters. Really pleased to have the commercial LNG pilot starting to come together to really complement what we've already got with our resource LNG in Australia and Qatar.

Operator

Our next question comes from Betty Jiang with Barclays.

Betty Jiang
Betty Jiang
Senior Equity Research Analyst - US Integrated Oil and E&Ps at Barclays

Hi team, thank you for taking my question. Maybe, Andy, a follow-up to your comment earlier about trying to understand where the CapEx lands for next year. I was wondering if you guys can give an early read on how you're thinking about 2026 at the moment with the additional cost savings you're envisioning, commodity prices probably a bit more supportive. How do you see development evolving next year?

Betty Jiang
Betty Jiang
Senior Equity Research Analyst - US Integrated Oil and E&Ps at Barclays

Where do you expect the major capital spend to trend? And maybe just frame how much of that long term free cash flow inflection could get captured next year?

Andy O’Brien
Andy O’Brien
CFO & SVP - Strategy & Commercial at ConocoPhillips

Thanks, Betty. I can try and take that one. Yeah, it is a little early to be talking about 2026, but I'm happy to share a few high level thoughts. So starting on the capital spending side of things, we've been saying this for a number of quarters now. We expect our capital next year to be lower than this year at the beginning of the cash flow fee inflection.

Andy O’Brien
Andy O’Brien
CFO & SVP - Strategy & Commercial at ConocoPhillips

And then maybe also just to touch on production. I think we've always been saying that for us, really is just simply an output of our plan. And if you look at what we're doing this year from our guidance, basically it implies about 2% growth on an underlying basis this year. And in the macro environment we see right now, I think this would be a pretty good place to start for modeling purposes for next year. I think Ryan mentioned it on the rig side in a previous question, we haven't added essentially a rig in the Lower 48 on the ConocoPhillips side in over three years.

Andy O’Brien
Andy O’Brien
CFO & SVP - Strategy & Commercial at ConocoPhillips

And right now, probably don't really see a good reason to do that. The other thing I would add is that in terms of maybe just going to one half this year to the second half next year, we're already starting to see the cash flow inflection coming. If you look at our CapEx guidance, we're guiding from one half this year to the second half that our CapEx is going to be down $1,000,000,000 You can see from our CFO from the first half to the second half that we're also going to have some tailwinds from higher APLNG distributions and the one big beautiful bill. So when you look at that and that continues on into 2026, I'd actually say that the cash flow inflection is effectively already starting.

Operator

Our next question comes from Nitin Kumar with Mizuho.

Nitin Kumar
Nitin Kumar
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Mizuho Financial Group, Inc.

Hi, good afternoon. Good morning, everyone. Ryan, one of your peers talked about industry consolidation going forward. You mentioned in the last three to four years, you've been at the forefront of that. So want to get a take on where do you see the M and A landscape right now, in Lower 48?

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

Yes, Nitin, I think there's still going to be consolidation in this business. I think a lot of the E and Ps in the unconventional space look out into their plans two to three years out and wonder what's going to happen. And I think, and that hasn't changed as capital intensity, people that don't have the inventory like we do face higher capital intensities and just what do they do about that. Now specific to us, this is the strongest I think our portfolio has ever been. And so it's a pretty high bar and we're focused pretty heavily right now on the organic side of the business where the investments that we're making to grow and develop the company both short, medium and long term.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

So I think that's where all of our focus is going. But look, we watch the market every day. We see what other people are doing and I'm familiar with the comments that were made by one of our peers. But we're just in a different position because of the effort and what we've done over the last four years that pointed out. And then the focus we're trying to drive internal to the company to chase another $1,000,000,000 of additional cash flow growth in the company.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

We see the inflection that Andy just talked about in our free cash flow coming as these projects start starting up over the course of the next three to four years. So we've got a pretty high bar and a pretty full plate today just executing on our organic plans.

Operator

Our next question comes from Ryan Todd with Piper Sandler.

Ryan Todd
Ryan Todd
MD & Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler Companies

Great. Thanks. Maybe a question on the Marathon transaction. You increased your expectation for the incremental resource adds from $2,000,000,000 to $2,500,000,000 barrels with a doubling of resource estimated resource in the Permian. Can you talk about what's driving that? What's been better than expected, particularly in the Permian?

Nick Olds
Nick Olds
EVP - Lower 48 & Global HSE at ConocoPhillips

Yes, Ryan. Good morning. As a reminder, the folks on the call, the Marathon transaction we announced the 2,000,000,000 barrels of low cost supply resource. Now we've got eight months under the Marathon hood to further assess the inventory and the development strategy across all the assets. As Andy mentioned, after completing the integration, we've got a 25% increase, so that's the $2,500,000,000 Now we were clear at the time of the acquisition that the quality positions in the Eagle Ford and Bakken were the primary strategic rationale for the transaction.

Nick Olds
Nick Olds
EVP - Lower 48 & Global HSE at ConocoPhillips

And we're seeing on aggregate the performance in those two basins have been in line even better than we expected with very strong well productivity versus the acquisition case. Now the upside identified, as Andy mentioned, is primarily in the Delaware Basin where we've approximately doubled our low cost supply resource estimate with some additional resource in the Bakken as well. Now in the Permian, this is largely driven by a greater contribution of both primary and secondary intervals across the play. For example, we got inventory across Wolfcamp A And C, Bone Springs and Woodford formations, which are very competitive cost of supply. And Ryan, that's through really reassessing the inventory and applying our development strategy, including spacing and stacking.

Nick Olds
Nick Olds
EVP - Lower 48 & Global HSE at ConocoPhillips

In fact, we're drilling some Wolfcamp A and C wells as well as some Woodford wells right now and seeing really promising results in line or even better than the type curves. In addition to the inventory described, we're also seeing opportunities to trade acreage to core up positions, adding more longer laterals which improves the cost of supply. If you go from a one to three mile lateral, we see that 30% to 40% improvement. So I just got the hats off to the team as we get under the hood, they're excited. There's more opportunities in there. So getting ready and enthused to execute upon it.

Operator

Our next question comes from Scott Hanold with RBC Capital Markets.

Scott Hanold
Scott Hanold
MD - Energy Research at RBC Capital Markets

Thanks. Ryan, it'd be good to hear your view of what you're seeing on the oil macro front. Obviously, if we wind the clock back last quarter, there's a lot of uncertainty. Oil price obviously is firmed up. I know you all do a lot of work, but I'd be interested in your thoughts on what you're seeing right now and how that could shape your plans into 2026?

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

Yeah, thanks, Scott. I think I described it as choppy this morning on CNBC, think, and that's kind of our, I'd say short near term view of the macro. Look, OPEC plus groups added about, they've unwound all the 2,200,000 barrels a day of cuts and then they added 300,000 more allocation to The UAE bringing that to 2.5. Our internal view is about 800,000 of that is already in the market. So that 2.5, you take 800,000 of five.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

So there's about 1,700,000 barrels a true incremental production, but that hasn't shown up in exports either because of the power burn and all the summer burn in The Middle East that's going on right now. And the demand grew in the first half a little bit more than what we would have predicted a little bit over a million barrels a day. I think for the full year, we're still at about 800,000 barrels a day of demand increases coming forward. So you can see it's a bit imbalanced more supply than the demand in the short term. But we got to remember that inventories that are five year lows, certainly here in The US, we're seeing some early indication that floating inventories might be coming up a little bit.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

Certainly China is filling their SBR right now feed their Tibet refineries. So there is a lot of moving pieces as you say. So how do we think about that? We step back, we see the choppiness although prices are hanging in about at our mid cycle price and they've been relatively stable in the 60s. So we see probably that continuing with probably a bit more pressure to the downside, which is why Andy talked about how we're executing our program and kind of how you should think about modeling our production as we go into 2026.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

And that's just, we probably see a little bit of choppiness and some slight headwinds as we go. But we're very constructive when you start stepping back for a minute and thinking about the longer term. See demand continuing to grow at a million barrel a day incremental clip or at all time highs in the demand side and we don't think that's stopping. So we do wonder where the supply is going to come to fill that growing demand over the next two, three, four, five years and beyond, which is was our view over the last few years, which is why we're leaning into some of the longer cycle projects. That's the oil side and then obviously on the gas side, we're pretty bullish there.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

See the LNG market growing from a 400,000,000 ton market to over 700,000,000 ton market within the next five to ten years, which is why we wanted to lean into the LNG side of the business. And we see a lot of resource in The US to support that and to underpin that strategy. So maybe that's a Reader's Digest abridged version of our view of the macro both on the oil and the gas side.

Operator

Our next question comes from Charles Meade with Johnson Rice.

Charles Meade
Research Analyst & Member at Johnson Rice & Company L.L.C.

Good morning, Ryan, you and your team there. And I caught your CNBC appearance. I thought that was a fine job. I wanted to ask a question on Willow. If you could perhaps give us a bit of a preview for what, when you do get back to work there, you know, on the ground in the winter season, what does this next winter season hold as far as key milestones and work streams and just an overview?

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

Yeah, I can let Kirk take that Charles. I would say we haven't quit working. We're pretty busy right now. I was just up there last week. We got a full team on the slope working through the summer and a lot of work going on in Corpus Christi, Keywood, Fabryard to building modules.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

But Kirk can jump in and give you a bit more specifics.

Kirk Johnson
Kirk Johnson
EVP - Global Operations & Technical Functions at ConocoPhillips

Yeah, morning Charles. Certainly as Ryan is mentioning, our execution here this year just continues to be really quite strong. We did wrap that winter season up, it was the largest that we had certainly in the last couple of years and really the largest we have here planned for the project. We wrapped that up late April, early May and so we've transitioned. Again, as Ryan witnessed, we're transitioning to year round construction up there on the slope.

Kirk Johnson
Kirk Johnson
EVP - Global Operations & Technical Functions at ConocoPhillips

We actually have about 900 tradesmen and craftsmen up on the slope right now. And that's down from what we were seeing during this peak winter season which was closer to 2,400, if not 2,500 people up there on the slope. It's been a pretty big transition for us here this spring. But of course our teams are really focused now, as you're alluding to, which is the activities we have here this summer and this fall. With that transition, those 900 craftsmen on the slope are continuing to build out that operation center that we see lifted up here last year with those modules on location. So there's a lot of work ongoing so that we can truly begin year round construction there in Alaska at the Willow location.

Kirk Johnson
Kirk Johnson
EVP - Global Operations & Technical Functions at ConocoPhillips

And then again, as Ryan mentioned, outside of Alaska, we're focused on completing engineering in support of these process modules that we're building here on the Gulf Coast. And then naturally that's going to continue through 2027. But certainly I would say as it relates to the activities here this year, there's just a lot of work by the team focusing appropriately on contracting, procurement, general supply chain activities. Admittedly tariffs have introduced some level of uncertainty that's manifesting with internationally sourced equipment alongside a trend of inflation that's pretty similar to what we've seen in the international markets and that's stabilizing as activities stabilize here, it's a good time for us to put a wrapper on some of these contracts here this year. We'll have close to 90% or 95% of these contracts pretty well secured by year end, so a lot of work in that space.

Kirk Johnson
Kirk Johnson
EVP - Global Operations & Technical Functions at ConocoPhillips

So again, Charles, would say strong execution, we're hitting the really key milestones. We have some more work of course in this next winter season as it relates to gravel on the North Slope, continuing to build that out towards the next set of pads and wrapping up the last pieces around pipelines and a bit of civil work. So certainly more to come, but the milestones we're achieving, we're hitting those as we expect and so it just continues to give us a lot of confidence in execution and strong expectations again around 2029 and first oil.

Operator

Our next question comes from Paul Cheng with Scotiabank.

Paul Cheng
Managing Director at Scotiabank

You. Good morning, guys. Ryan, I want to ask about Eagle Ford. But before that, can I just sneak in and just clarify or that confirm? Willow, the capital is still at $7,000,000,000 And in terms of Eagle Ford, with the Marathon deal, they do have some really decent assets there.

Paul Cheng
Managing Director at Scotiabank

Can you give us an outlook to the way that you see Eagle Ford on the longer term basis? I mean, I think in the past that you have a view where that Eagle Ford will get to maybe for you guys, they call it 300,000 barrels per day. Now with this better performance in the second quarter and also then much larger resource base, how should we look at Eagle Ford for your portfolio? Thank you.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

Yeah, thanks, Paul. I can let Nick chime in on April product. I think we're seeing everything and then some based on the acquisition case we had for Marathon and some of the well results that I've seen over the last few months coming out of Eagle Ford on the Marathon acreage in particular, let alone our acreage has given us a lot of comfort in the case and we're seeing upside out of that as well. And I can let Nick talk a little bit about the longer term perspective we might see in the Eagle Ford.

Nick Olds
Nick Olds
EVP - Lower 48 & Global HSE at ConocoPhillips

Yes, thanks Paul. Maybe just talk about short term here on the Eagle Ford. Obviously, as you pointed out, we had a really strong quarter related to Eagle Ford production, had really strong base production as well as new wells coming online. We actually had a little bit of lumpiness, brought 10% more wells online in 2Q in Eagle Ford. So you saw that slight bump in production.

Nick Olds
Nick Olds
EVP - Lower 48 & Global HSE at ConocoPhillips

I will say, we're really starting to get our understanding around the Heritage Marathon component in Eagle Ford. And what we're seeing there Paul is the wells are performing at or above type curve. So that's really good. I also say in Eagle Ford, we're sharing best practices across Heritage Marathon, Heritage COP. And you may have heard that we had our best year ever in drilling within that asset.

Nick Olds
Nick Olds
EVP - Lower 48 & Global HSE at ConocoPhillips

We had a 13% improvement in fee per day by combining best practices in drilling. So just hats off to the team there. Couple of other things on near term, one of the things related to the acquisition, we're also sharing our facilities being able to combine those two where we can reroute production, we can shelter maintenance and that's leading to that increased production as well. So in summary, really strong Q2. Now if I look longer term as Ryan mentioned, when you take a look at the inventory combined for Eagle Ford, we have an industry leading position.

Nick Olds
Nick Olds
EVP - Lower 48 & Global HSE at ConocoPhillips

We're sitting on fifteen years of inventory that's at current rig activities levels and now hold a significant share of the remaining Tier one inventory in the play. No one else comes close to that. Longer term, we're continuing to assess the optimum plateau of that asset and we'll give you an update. One of the things we're looking at is the ongoing efficiencies that we continue to see outperform quarter to quarter. And so dialing into an exact plateau remains ongoing discussion.

Nick Olds
Nick Olds
EVP - Lower 48 & Global HSE at ConocoPhillips

But that said, we'll land somewhere modestly below 2Q production as we go forward here in the near term. Really strong performance across Eagle Ford, really strong what we're seeing with well results.

Operator

Our next question comes from Leo Mariani with Roth.

Leo Mariani
MD & Senior Research Analyst at Roth Capital Partners, LLC

I just wanted to follow-up a little bit on the asset sales here. Could you maybe give us what the rough production split is on the 40,000 barrel a day you're selling there in the Anadarko in terms of oil and gas? And then can you just talk a little bit about the timing on asset sales? Was there a particular reason you decided to kind of increase it right now? Certainly, lot of the conversation in the call is talking about kind of macro uncertainty out there. So maybe just kind of talk about the environment to sell stuff now.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

Yeah, no, thanks, Neil. I think we're, yeah, it's again, I tried to describe, we just go through a standard process inside our company to identify potential assets that we think would be worth more to other people than they are to us. And that's certainly proven out in the Anadarko Basin Asset Sale too. Can have Guy come back to you with the I don't know the it was mostly gas, but I don't know what the liquids mix is on that 30,000 barrels a day, but Guy can come back and provide that to you. And look, we'll sell assets when we think we're getting good value for them.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

Look, we know what our whole value is. We know what they're worth to us inside the portfolio. We're not fire selling anything in the company. And there's assets that we've marketed that we haven't sold. We haven't sold because either the current macro environment wasn't supportive of it.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

And again, know what our whole value is and we know what the market is and we'll move them out. We as we look across that portfolio of opportunities for the company, we felt comfortable with a $5,000,000,000 target by the end of next year. So feel comfortable we got those assets to kind of sell and we're hard at work trying to deliver that.

Operator

Our next question comes from Philip Youngworth with BMO.

Phillip Jungwirth
Phillip Jungwirth
Managing Director at BMO Capital Markets

Thanks for taking the question.

Phillip Jungwirth
Phillip Jungwirth
Managing Director at BMO Capital Markets

I wanted to ask about return on capital. Conoco has historically been a leader here among the independents and integrated. We have seen corporate returns come down across the sector, much of which is oil price, but also M and A. So you look at the organic $6,000,000,000 free cash inflection that you have for major project startups, I was hoping you can talk to how this improves ROCE by the end of the decade, or there'd be more improvement really from accelerating the Lower 48 growth at the right commodity price?

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

Yes, Phil, look, all these projects that we're executing meet our cost supply hurdles. So it almost kind of doesn't matter where you allocate, you're going see the growth in the ROCE. And that's what we're trying to drive inside the company. We're trying to be competitive with the S and P 500, not just competitive with our peers in this industry. We want to outperform even the S and P 500, give investors a resource or an E and P choice that they can invest in that can deliver year in, out through the cycles, competitive ROC.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

And obviously when the price whistles down as much as it may have did in the COVID year, it's tough and in 2022 was pretty damn good as prices goes back. But we're trying to deliver through the cycle, ROCE improvements and invest to compete against the S and P 500. That's what we're about. That's how our performance gets judged. And that's what we're trying to go do.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

And as you inflect your free cash flow, 6,000,000,000, 7,000,000,000 over the course of next three to four years, obviously the CFO is growing. And we do have a unique value proposition in this business, which is you get your CFO off the top from us. And we have a commitment of a minimum of 30% at a mid cycle price and when prices have exceeded that like they have for the last number of years, we've given a lot more of that CFO back about 45%. So that's what we're signaling again this year and we don't see that changing. So as that free cash flow in Flex and our CFO grows, distributions are going to grow with that.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

The opportunity to invest in organic programs come with that and strengthening the balance sheet comes with that as well. But absolutely as our cash flow grows and free cash flow grows, distributions grow as well. And we're investing in the right things. We believe in what we're investing in our ROCE will grow on a mid cycle case basis as well.

Operator

Our last question will come from Kalei Akamai with Bank of America.

Kalei Akamine
Kalei Akamine
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America

Hey, good morning, guys. Thank you very much for squeezing me in. Look, I appreciate the strong performance on Lower 48. Last time you gave an outlook on a multiyear basis was in 2023. And you suggested that there will be a capital ramp through the early 2030s.

Kalei Akamine
Kalei Akamine
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America

But when you look at the business today and the efficiencies achieved, it appears that you're still on the same production track. So kind of wondering if you can hit those production targets without adding significant activity or without any change in CapEx.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

Yes, I mean, that's the name of this game. You got to be capital light, capital efficient and that's how you grow your ROCE and that's how you grow your distributions and your free cash flow. So you're right to observe the last time we updated the market. Since then we've done the Marathon transaction, as I think Andy alluded to in some of his questions and comments, we haven't added a rig line any one of the last three to four years. We're still delivering the production growth at a lower 48.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

We're just being a lot more efficient, a lot less capital spend and that's the name of the game. So we started every year thinking about, let's just keep the scope of what we're doing constant. And as Andy said in his response to one of the questions, the production or the growth that comes out of that's purely an output. We will always start trying to keep our stable programs in place. We don't want to whipsaw them up.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

We don't like to whipsaw them down. Obviously we can react to both sides of that environment, but we like the consistent stable execution and programs. And we haven't had a rig line or significantly increase the frac spreads and we're operating within a pretty efficient frontier range where one frac spread can handle three to four rig lines and that's improving with the technology and we want to be improving with that as well. So I think we have a lot of flexibility. We have a lot of inventory and deep diverse inventory.

Ryan Lance
Ryan Lance
Chairman & CEO at ConocoPhillips

So we've got a lot of choices and options. And as I said in one of my comments earlier that it's really the best place and the strongest portfolio we've ever had as a company.

Operator

We have no further questions at this time. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Executives
    • Guy Baber
      Guy Baber
      VP - IR
    • Ryan Lance
      Ryan Lance
      Chairman & CEO
    • Andy O’Brien
      Andy O’Brien
      CFO & SVP - Strategy & Commercial
    • Nick Olds
      Nick Olds
      EVP - Lower 48 & Global HSE
    • Kirk Johnson
      Kirk Johnson
      EVP - Global Operations & Technical Functions
Analysts
    • Neil Mehta
      Head - Americas Natural Resources Equity Research at Goldman Sachs
    • Arun Jayaram
      Research Analyst at JP Morgan Chase & Co
    • Stephen Richardson
      Senior Managing Director at Evercore
    • Doug Leggate
      MD & Senior Research Analyst at Wolfe Research
    • Lloyd Byrne
      Managing Director - Equity Research at Jefferies LLC
    • Betty Jiang
      Senior Equity Research Analyst - US Integrated Oil and E&Ps at Barclays
    • Nitin Kumar
      Senior Equity Research Analyst at Mizuho Financial Group, Inc.
    • Ryan Todd
      MD & Senior Research Analyst at Piper Sandler Companies
    • Scott Hanold
      MD - Energy Research at RBC Capital Markets
    • Charles Meade
      Research Analyst & Member at Johnson Rice & Company L.L.C.
    • Paul Cheng
      Managing Director at Scotiabank
    • Leo Mariani
      MD & Senior Research Analyst at Roth Capital Partners, LLC
    • Phillip Jungwirth
      Managing Director at BMO Capital Markets
    • Kalei Akamine
      Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America
Powered by Quartr