Gran Tierra Energy Inc.
Q3 2017 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 3 Nov 2017

[Operator:]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Gran Tierra Energy's Results Conference Call for the Third Quarter 2017. My name is Kevin, and I will be your coordinator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the initial remarks, we will conduct a question-and-answer session for securities, analysts and institutions. Instructions will be provided at that time to queue up for your question. [Operator Instructions] I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being webcast and recorded today, Friday, November 3, 2017, at 11 AM Eastern Time. Today's discussion may include certain forward-looking information, oil and gas information, and non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the earnings press release and operational update press release we issued yesterday for important disclaimers with regard to the information and reconciliation of any non-GAAP measures discussed on today's call. Finally, this earnings call is the property of Gran Tierra Energy, Inc. Any copy or rebroadcasting of this call is expressly forbidden without the written consent of Gran Tierra Energy. I will now turn the conference over to Gary Guidry, President and Chief Executive Officer of Gran Tierra. Mr. Guidry, please go ahead.

[Gary Guidry:]

Thank you, Kevin. Good morning and welcome to Gran Tierra's Third Quarter 2017 results conference call. My name is Gary Guidry, Gran Tierra's President and Chief Executive Officer. And today with me is Ryan Ellson, our Chief Financial Officer. We are going to use the same approach today as we used with our last conference call. As you know, we released our third quarter financial results and an operations update yesterday and we hope you've had time to review those releases. Instead of reiterating some of the information in the press releases, we are going to open directly to an open question-and-answer session. I will turn the call back over to the operator and Ryan and I will be glad to answer any questions. Operator?

[Operator:]

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now conduct a question-and-answer session for securities analysts. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Nathan Piper with RBC.

[Nathan Piper:]

Good morning, guys. Can I ask a couple of broader questions, please? First of all, on production and you haven't been that clear on how production is looking for Q4 and in 2018. So, why don't you give a bit of color on how and the success at Acordionero balancing though with what's going on in Costayaco and Moqueta? And then secondly, the limestone play in Southern Columbia is obviously very exciting. I wondered if you could give a bit more color on what the B-Limestone might mean that you are intersecting with Siriri, but at the same time how are you actually going to explain it given some of the initial results of the horizontal wells across the Aco? Thank you.

[Gary Guidry:]

Sure. On production, Nathan, we are - we are not changing our guidance for the fourth quarter. We are currently trading at roughly 34 plus thousand barrels per day. We got a few more Acordionero wells that will be on during the quarter. And regarding Costayaco and Moqueta, we're managing best we can with power interruptions. And as we said in our release, we hope to be commissioning the gas to power project here towards the end of the year and alleviate completely the issues that we've been having. And in terms of the A-Limestone, the B-Limestone and early since the carbonate play is just a deeper water sequence. As you move west in the basin, the sequence develops and we're approaching it the same way as we are the A-Limestone and that is at the moment just getting production results at Siriri. That's where we're at now. We're just starting the testing operations and we'll look at different ways to stimulate. As we said in our operations release, we're getting great results from the vertical wells. And what our focus is now with our industry partner, Howburton [ph] is looking at how we can best stimulate both vertical and horizontal wells as we move down the learning curve. I hope that answered your questions.

[Ryan Ellson:]

And, Nathan, for 2018 guidance will be coming out mid-December.

[Nathan Piper:]

Maybe one quick follow-up if I can and one quick follow-up on the A-Limestone side, I mean I guess at some point we hope that you'll be able to prosecute a campaign of kind of development of pressure drilling to A-Limestone and then B-Limestone, that is deliver a couple of well results in the quarter and increase production of the consequence and have you learned enough that you could put a program like that to get to next year or are there a couple of more quarters of learnings to be undertaken before you can be confident on how you are going to explain the resource?

[Gary Guidry:]

Yeah. The well that we just drilled and actually we're just cleaning up Costayaco 30. We collected quite a bit of information, lots of the information recorded, we ran some preserved sidewalk orders to get fluids and get pressures. We ran some NMR, magnetic resonance tool. So, we effectively collected as much data as we could on this well. We're giving ourselves a two-month window, but during those two months we're building pads. We're building sellers, because we're confident enough in the regional play at Costayaco where we have facilities, we will be programming in our 2018 budget some wells that will be adding production. Whether those are vertical or horizontal, we're not in a position to say yet, but we're ready for either.

[Nathan Piper:]

That's good. Thank you.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Josef Schachter with Schachter Energy Research.

[Josef Schachter:]

Good morning, Gary. The production numbers you've mentioned were about 34,000. How much volumes are you still waiting behind pipe? Question number one, and two, how much volume was impacting you negatively in the quarter from the south of the Costayaco and Moqueta?

[Gary Guidry:]

Behind pipe we try to bring horizontals as quickly as we can. We actually have two wells that we're just bringing on at Acordionero. One we are running, VSP, a seismic profile. The other we are literally bringing on over the next day or two. So, there's probably 2000 barrels a day in those two wells and we have a continuous drilling program. In terms of the impact from Aco during the quarter, roughly 1000 to 1500 barrels a day is what our impact was on those wells or the shutdowns, if you look at both the injection, as well as the production response, we're behind by about a 1000 to 1500 barrels a day.

[Josef Schachter:]

Okay. Thank you. One more question, given how cheap the stock is and how strong your cash flow was in the quarter and your guidance on the CapEx, are you going to pick up the pace of stock buybacks given how cheap the stock is?

[Ryan Ellson:]

Yeah, good question. We know potential bid in place and right now we're just in the midst of putting together our 2018 budget program and part of that is we're entirely looking at additional free cash flow that we could deploy to share buyback.

[Josef Schachter:]

Okay. That's it for me. Thanks so much.

[Gary Guidry:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

[Operator Instructions] Gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. Please continue.

[Gary Guidry:]

Okay. Thank you, operator. I would again like to thank everyone for joining us today. We look forward to speaking with you over the next quarter to update you on our ongoing progress. Thank you very much.

[Operator:]

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's presentation. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful day.