CHK
#Sure, <UNK>, I'll take that.
It's Nick.
We remain in constant dialogue with Williams on a number of fronts, as well as some of our other downstream partners.
And you've seen us have a variety of success across a number of fronts this year to align our current operating activity to current market environment with the contracts that we have in place.
And we've had very good receptivity from all of our partners to do that.
With respect to Williams, you did see that we lowered our gas gathering outlook by $0.05.
And that just really comes down to, as we set the cost of service for the year, an alignment around what our activity plans are, where to spend money, how much to spend, and how that rolls through the calculations.
So that's minor evidence ---+ although it does generate a pretty reasonable amount of capital, of course ---+ minor evidence of how we can continue to work together to optimize around existing structures.
Negotiations on new structures, like I said, do continue, and we are making good progress there.
And we will just have to ask you to hang with us.
Obviously we have had good success over the last year there, and are confident that we will continue to have more in the coming months.
This is <UNK> <UNK> again, <UNK>.
We have gas that we can manage our production rates to a very manageable ---+ no decline, basically, which is a great opportunity for us in the Marcellus.
As far as the delays that we've seen, we were not on constitution, so that's really not something that we were counting on.
We did have a small amount of gas that we wanted to put through net.
Of course that's apparently gone now.
So, we have an opportunity here to really manage this field to a really nice, no-decline position, with very little capital.
If you go to page 13 on the slides, you'll see that we're really not putting a lot of capital into the Marcellus because it doesn't need capital.
As far as monies being spent in the field, it is going to the Utica.
The Utica has access through ---+ open to the Gulf.
And we are going to be putting on additional Utica dry wells this year and next year, and drilling some additional Utica dry wells going forward.
As far as sales or divestitures of assets, Marcellus is a core asset.
There are parts of the Marcellus that might not be core, and we would consider that with the right price.
Utica, we're pretty happy with our position.
I might just add on to <UNK> that the Marcellus is an incredibly powerful asset: stability in production, significant upside in terms of future opportunity there in the Marcellus, the Upper Marcellus; an ultra-low cost operating team up there.
It just presents a significant high-return opportunity for us.
Obviously the gas position and getting the gas out is the key issue.
And we will continue to monitor that, and ready to invest there when the opportunity presents itself of getting more gas out of the basin.
Well, I guess I'd have to go back to ---+ we've got a lot of exciting things still left in the mid-con.
We have 1.5 million acres there, so we've got really strong economics there.
And then our Eagle Ford has experienced a renaissance, as well, with the longer laterals.
So those are still preferentially, if we're spending more dollars, those plays always look a really strong.
In the Haynesville, again, we are continuing to improve.
We are getting close to 20% returns at the strip here, so it's hard to explain how impactful these long laterals have been to that play out there.
Because we see no degradation in performance with these 10,000 foot wells, so we're getting double the production for effectively half the cost out there.
We also have a new play there I didn't mention on my first set of comments.
We've got our first 7,500 foot Bossier well that's flowing today, and it's 17 million cubic feet a day at 7,300 pounds.
There's a lot of exciting things going on in the Haynesville.
But our Eagle Ford team, they are drilling ---+ plan to drill for this year 9,800 foot wells, on average, which is nearly double what they were couple of years ago.
So their returns have gone through the roof, and we're actually ---+ our returns today in Eagle Ford, with the current cost, are about the same as when oil was $80.
It's just significant how much of a change the Eagle Ford team has made there.
We had wells coming on a year ago at 500 barrels a day.
Our latest wells are coming on close to 1,000 barrels a day.
So we've had just a huge transformation in the Eagle Ford team over this first quarter here.
But for me, again, if I'm fighting for capital, that's the area I want to send it first.
So, just to reiterate that we really like our mid-con position; continue to believe it's a significantly undervalued asset in our portfolio.
Specific to your point, <UNK>, we see upside in the Meramec in the remaining acreage that we have.
It's not necessarily all gas, or more gassy-related.
And we see other significant opportunities with the Oswego that we've noted before.
When you look at our position, we've got what we believe to be still good upside opportunity.
And we will be balancing the investments across oil and gas in mid-con, where we can get the best return.
Do you want to add anything to that, <UNK>.
Now.
Again, when we would talk about the acreage we retain, we're focused on the yellow in the Northeast part of Kingfisher County up there.
That's where the Oswego acreage is that we looked at.
But we had it on one of our releases a while back, just map of all the stacked plays in mid-con.
They are much larger than just this small stacked area.
We've struggled to come up with a name of what we would call the stack, as we've got Miss Lime wells that, again, continues to get downplayed but have fantastic results out of the Miss Lime continually.
But there's just all kinds of stacked plays that are ---+ there's new tests going out on the mid-con all the time, and because of our large acreage position, we are set to take advantage of those.
And we've got some new prospects that I'm really looking forward to talking to you about as this year progresses, and into next year.
Because our G&G teams are just really fired up about all the potential they see in mid-con.
It's more than just the Meramec.
Yes, there's two sales there.
So we had the FourPoint sale, which is the southwesterly sale; but yes, that's ---+ the target in the middle, though, is what we sold this time.
No, this is all just a repeat of our last disclosure.
We had done the debt for equity exchanges, some open market purchases, and then we had completed our exchange obviously back in December.
So, no, there's been no increment activity since then.
I think the last time we updated the market on this was around the ---+ sometime in March.
And then pretty quickly thereafter that, we got into an earnings quiet period and all of those things.
So we've been quiet on this front recently, as we completed our bank amendment and got through earnings, and look forward to being more active in the weeks to come.
Sure, <UNK>.
A good question.
We still see good opportunity with the other remaining STACK opportunities and the remaining acreage that we have ---+ as <UNK> noted, 1.5 million acres that we still have good leverage in that particular asset to help us with our midstream negotiations.
And, likewise, in the other assets, we continue to work closely with Williams, looking at additional stratigraphic dedications, lateral dedications, potential other business lines.
There are a number of things that we are working.
We still remain excited and encouraged that we will continue to find improvement there, and win-win solutions with Williams.
And what I would just encourage you to focus on, as we have done several times, and highlighted what we intended to do, we have accomplished just that.
And I'm confident that that will be the case again.
Yes, so the volumetric production payments, we presently have six remaining.
Each have a different timeline.
With the asset sales that we've highlighted, we will see the number of VPPs, and the complexity associated with them, continue to reduce.
With these transactions, we should see three or four of those go away.
As we noted in the press release, and I put in my comments, that's principally the reduction that you see from the gross proceeds down to the net proceeds of about $950 million, <UNK>.
So, what remains, we will ---+ are at different time intervals.
But when I started the Company, we had nine.
We have six today.
And we will continue to see more roll off this year.
And so that volume really is insignificant, at this point in time.
<UNK>, just to provide a little bit more color there.
We will ---+ after the transactions that <UNK> just spoke about, we will have remaining our VPP in the Devonian and our VPP in a field in northern Oklahoma called the Sahara field.
Other than that, everything else will have been retired, like the Barnett last year, or repurchased.
It's possible, <UNK>.
I think it just depends on structures of transactions and where assets sit, and what else is around them.
So, it is certainly possible.
Well, first, I will never underestimate the Chesapeake employees.
They are doing a phenomenal job on our costs and those continued improvements.
And I expect there to be nothing more than continued improvement.
Capability with (multiple speakers).
Well, I think I just would highlight again the capability and capacity of this Company is phenomenal.
And the technology improvements, the efficiency of the organization, G&A reductions that we've had to undergo, like a lot of the industry, have not compromised the strength and ability of this Company.
And so, I feel very good about our competitive position ---+ competitive position to reduce costs in the current pricing environment; and competitive position that, should we see a more stable, higher-price environment, that we could ramp up and handle that additional capital activity level very easily.
Okay, well, I appreciate everyone's time on the call today.
We are very encouraged about the progress that we continue to make at Chesapeake.
As I noted in one of the questions there, we have highlighted a number of times our strategy and our intent to further improve the Company.
And I just want to reiterate that today.
Our commitment is as strong as ever ---+ our commitment to drive greater value for our shareholders and all the stakeholders, the excellent work by the employees of Chesapeake in making sure that we drive for the greatest return and the greatest value for this Company.
We will continue to be focusing on that, and I look forward to the rest of the year and sharing with the investment community our continued progress.
Thank you all for your time.
