Gran Tierra Energy Inc.
Q1 2015 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 7 May 2015

[Operator:]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Gran Tierra Energy's Results Conference Call for the Quarter Ended March 31, 2015. My name is Whitney, and I will be your coordinator for today. [Operator Instructions]. I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being webcast and recorded today, Thursday, May 7, 2015, at 4

[Jeffrey J. Scott:]

Okay. Good afternoon, and welcome to Gran Tierra's First Quarter 2015 Results Conference Call. My name is Jeff Scott, Gran Tierra's Executive Chairman. And with me today is Duncan Nightingale, Interim President and Chief Executive Officer; and James Rozon, Chief Financial Officer. Last night, we disseminated a press release that included detailed financial information about the first quarter 2015. In addition, Gran Tierra Energy's Q1 2015 report on Form 10-Q for the 3 months ending March 31, 2015, has been filed on EDGAR and is available on our website at www.grantierra.com. We assume that everyone has read the press release. In a moment, I will turn the call directly to a question-and-answer session. Before beginning the Q&A session, I would like to make a very brief comment with respect to West Face Capital's recent director nominations. As we have stated, we take the views of our stockholders seriously, and we've been in discussions with our stockholders, including West Face. These discussions are ongoing, and we do not intend to comment on them today. The purpose of today's call is to discuss our first quarter results, and we ask that you limit your questions to this topic, please. Operator, please go ahead.

[Operator:]

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Nathan Piper with RBC Capital Markets.

[Nathan Piper:]

A couple of quick ones for me, I hope. And on CapEx, I wondered if you could provide us an even more clarity. And obviously, you stated a reason like in Q1, your cash numbers come down. But I want to be clear on within the $140 million guidance for 2015, is that contained within this $70-odd million you spent this quarter? I guess, what I'm trying to figure out is, are you also including some spending that you brought on -- brought through from last year? Or will you limit your spending to $140 million for the whole year?

[James Rozon:]

I'll answer that. This is James. So our capital expenditure program for 2015 remains at $140 million. As of the end of this first quarter, we have spent $74 million of that program. So there is a remaining $66 million of capital expenditures expected for the remaining 3 quarters.

[Nathan Piper:]

That's clear. And a quick one again on the ANH dispute that you've got on the royalties on the Chaza Block. And you could be on the hook here for, I don't know, almost $100 million. Have you got any sense of the timing of how that process is going to proceed? I know there are other similar processes going on in Columbia. But specifically to yours, how long do you think before you get to some sort of conclusion?

[James Rozon:]

It's a good question. And I think, to be very honest with you, this is going to take a few more months before this all shapes out. There's a very good chance that our discussions will end up very favorably with the ANH. They are ongoing at the moment. I'm not going to prejudge the outcome, but we're in the process of listening to each other's arguments at the moment. And as I said, we may -- we remain very confident that our position will prevail.

[Nathan Piper:]

Okay. You're not prejudging the outcome, but you're making no provision for it?

[James Rozon:]

No, no provision, whatsoever.

[Nathan Piper:]

Okay. And last quick one. And given the oil prices are improving, and does that make you, number one, reassess your capital plan for the year? Or number two, does that make you want to accelerate any deal activity you've got, so you can take advantage of the current share price and oil price weakness?

[Jeffrey J. Scott:]

Yes, Nathan. This is Jeff. I think the answer to that is yes. This is -- this will be an ongoing monitoring of the oil price. We based our CapEx on 100 -- sorry, $50 flat. And obviously, we're a little better than that. So if we start generating significant cash flow, there's an opportunity to bring forward some of the wells that were suspended. So yes, that will be under constant review.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Jamie Somerville with TD Securities.

[Jamie Somerville:]

Duncan, probably, I was wondering if you could just give some more detail on what exactly happened with the injection well on Moqueta? And why evaluating the injection results from the Zapotero well is going to -- what you need to see there and what your potential next actions are going to be?

[Duncan Nightingale:]

Okay. Yes, the primary reason for drilling the Moqueta-18 injection well was to provide pressure support to the eastern part of the Moqueta field known as the South Block. We have noticed a slight pressure drop there, these 2 wells in particular, Moqueta-3 and Moqueta 13, where we have seen the gas oil ratio rise slightly, which is obviously a consequence of dropping reservoir pressure. So Moqueta-18 was supposed to provide that additional pressure support. But unfortunately, due to surface restrictions where we could actually drill the well from, Moqueta-18 was designed as a fairly large step-out deviated well, with a deviation of about 60, 64 degrees and drilling through multiple thrust sheets. There's a particular formation known as the Bogotá, which is notably unstable regarding drilling. And unfortunately, we had some mechanical problems drilling in one of the Bogotá's repeat sections, which unfortunately resulted in the abandonment of the well -- suspension of the well. And so really, what we've gone and done now is gone back to Plan B, which is injection into the Zapotero well. If you can remember, that well was drilled even further to the east. It's quite a ways down-dip of the intended bottom hole location of Moqueta-18. And we intended -- we suspended that well some time ago with the intention of reentering. And we have successfully reentered that well and tested the well regarding injectivity. And we've been pleasantly surprised by the injectivity of the Tiê and Cabañas reservoirs, which is allowed -- currently allowing us to inject about 2,500 barrel a day with the intention of raising that to 5,000 barrels a day in the not-too-distant future. But the bottom hole location of the Zapotero well, as I mentioned, is significantly down-dip. So the pressure response that we expect to see -- positive for pressure response we expect to see, Moqueta-3 and Moqueta-13, will most likely not be seen for another 3 weeks or so. So as soon as we've given the time -- the reservoir time to respond, we will conduct a pressure buildup test in those wells, see how the reservoir pressure has changed. And if it's changed positively and providing the pressure support that we require, we will continue the injectivity into Zapotero. If, however, the results are negative, then we will reevaluate the results with potential other options, which could be drilling Moqueta-19, which would be a less-deviated well in a different location and much easier and less complicated to drill. So it really depends on the next 2, 3 weeks of pressure -- of injectivity and result of pressure buildup, Jamie.

[Jamie Somerville:]

Great. And Jeff, I realized you said you didn't want to answer questions regarding West Face. But can I just check that also means you don't want to comment on potential timing for filing of the management information circular, is that a no comment?

[Jeffrey J. Scott:]

That's a no comment.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Ian Macqueen with Paradigm.

[Ian Macqueen:]

A couple of quick questions. One stems from Jamie's last question. One of the things you are waiting for on Moqueta was a Global Development Permit. Historically, there's been problems in drilling appropriately placed wells, because you didn't have a Global Development permit. And now, we are actually hearing that about this most recent well. Can you explain that situation? And is there any issues? Like I thought the Global Development Permit was going to resolve any issues you had on where -- as far as where you're drilling the field?

[Duncan Nightingale:]

Okay, Ian. This is Duncan. I'll take that question. The best way to explain that, Ian, is you're correct. The Global Development Permit was issued back in, I believe, October of last year. And the Global Development Permit does cover the area that we applied for with respect to the full-field development of Moqueta field. However, within that global development area, we are restricted to certain drilling locations, certain pad locations. And this is why we have adopted a pad style of drilling, not only to reduce costs, but also to comply with the environmental regulations and the Global Development Permit itself. So although we have a Global Development Permit, we are restricted to those pad locations. So depending on where -- what is the bottom hole location of any intended well, we need to drill the deviated wells. But we are restricting that now because the future development plan of the field, we can actually continue with that without drilling these highly deviated wells. So it's a restriction within the Global Development Permit. But we believe now that we've-- although we really don't fully understand the oil water contact in the main block, we believe that with respect to the South and Central Blocks, we can drill all bottom hole locations now without drilling highly deviated wells.

[Ian Macqueen:]

Okay, perfect. One other question. As far as -- I know your focus is to go back and mostly spend money on Colombia. It's really hard to put the brakes on, I can appreciate that, on both Peru and Brazil. This quarter, we saw about $38 million in spending in Peru and about $13.1 million in Brazil. On the most recent conference call, on the 2nd of March, Duncan, you had said that your commitments in Peru would be in the order of about $160 million over the next 2- to 3-year period. Have you got any more clarity? And are we going to continue to expect to see spending in Peru and Brazil this year and going forward?

[Jeffrey J. Scott:]

So this is Jeff. I'll answer that one. Most of that spend was programs that had carryovers from 2014, i.e., the drilling of the L4 well, which carried on into the New Year and the LTT test, which we then suspended. So the bulk of that spending in both Peru and Brazil was pre-committed. In Brazil, it was seismic, ongoing seismic. So those spends have obviously gone down to a bare minimum amount. As far as the capital costs in Peru go, we're undergoing efforts to get extensions on the blocks. And okay, Duncan had just told me, which I had forgotten, we have extension, 3 extension on Block 107, which pushes out these commitments. And I think it's been said before that we -- our intent is not to be spending big capital in Peru and that has not changed.

[Ian Macqueen:]

So reasonably, we shouldn't expect in the remaining $66 -- $66 million for this year? We should not expect appreciable amounts to go to either Brazil or Peru? Is that fair?

[James Rozon:]

Well, I think, we are budgeting for Peru -- this is James, sorry, budgeting for Peru this year of $55 million, of which we spent $38 million so far. So we still expect to spend money, first on facility long-term test facility removal costs and then some additional G&G costs in Block 107.

[Ian Macqueen:]

Okay. Right, right. And that's right. You did give us that guidance before. Okay. One other question and I'm sorry, maybe I've not gone into the kind of detail that I need to. But your PP&E increases were about $127 million or almost $128 million, but your CapEx was $74 million. Can you provide some guidance, James, on the difference between those 2 numbers?

[James Rozon:]

Sure. So what you're referring to is the cash outflows associated with investing activities. That's basically tracked how we spend our cash in the quarter or either earn it or spend it. So if you look at our year-end balance sheet and our payables and accrued liabilities in our tax and payable position, we had over $200 million of payables on those 3 items alone, which now have decreased to just over $120 million in total. So essentially, we've paid those. Some of those costs or most of those costs are associated with investing activities, specifically capital expenditures. So the decrease in assets and liabilities associated with investing activities are netted with those capital expenditures of $74 million. And that's how we get to the 20 -- $127.8 million. So there's -- in there, I think, it's $53.8 million of basically what we would call loosely changes in noncash working capital and associated again with those capital activities.

[Operator:]

Gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. Please continue.

[Jeffrey J. Scott:]

Okay. Thanks, everyone, for your time today. And in conclusion, I'd just like to say that Gran Tierra is working diligently to position the company for future growth through effective cost management. We'd like to thank all of our stakeholders for their continued support of Gran Tierra. Thanks for your time.

[Operator:]

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.