Coterra Energy Inc.

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Dan Guffey, Vice President of Finance, Investor Relations, and Treasurer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Audra. Good morning, and thank you for joining Cotera Energy's first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Today's prepared remarks will include an overview from Tom Jordan, Chairman, CEO, and President, Shane Young, Executive Vice President and CFO, and Blake Sergo, Senior Vice President of Operations. Following our prepared remarks, we will take your questions during our Q&A session. As a reminder, on today's call, we will make forward-looking statements based on our current expectations. Additionally, some of our comments will reference non-GAAP financial measures. Forward-looking statements and other disclaimers, as well as reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, were provided in our earnings release and updated investor presentation, both of which can be found on our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Tom.

Thank you, Dan, and welcome to all of you who are joining us on the call this morning. We're pleased to report that Cotera had an excellent first quarter. Our total equivalent production for the quarter was 686,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, which was near the high end of our guidance. Oil production averaged 102.5 thousand barrels of oil per day, which was 3,500 barrels of oil per day above the high end of our guidance. This beat in oil production was driven by a combination of well performance that exceeded expectations, production optimization, and timing. Natural gas production averaged 2.96 billion cubic feet a day, which was slightly above the high end of our guidance. Capital expenditures came in at $450 million, which was below the guidance range. This was a combination of timing and cost reductions and completions. Blake will provide further detail on this. We have raised our full year oil guidance while leaving our natural gas guidance unchanged. Shane will provide commentary here. As we previously said, our capital guidance for 2024 includes room for adding additional Marcellus activity if our received prices in the Marcellus were to rebound. Of course, Any additional activity will be evaluated against other shovel-ready opportunities in our portfolio. Rapid and severe commodity price swings are a feature of our business. As much as we try to anticipate and predict market movements, there is an inherent humbling unpredictability to them. During Q1, we saw upward movement in oil coupled with downward movement in gas. Despite these swings, Revenue at Cotera for Q1 2024 came in roughly flat with revenue for Q4 2023. This stability in revenue allows us the luxury of maintaining a consistent level of activity while retaining significant upside exposure to a gas price recovery. We did, however, delay some Marcellus turn-in lines during Q1. We currently have two pads comprising 12 wells completed and waiting to be brought online. We have ongoing completion activity and are making the go, no-go decision on bringing wells online on a monthly basis. Blake will provide further detail on this. In spite of near-term headwinds, we remain wholly optimistic on natural gas. With coming LNG export capacity, near-term power demand, and the evolving discussion about the long-term power demands of AI-driven data center needs, it is hard not to be constructive on the future of natural gas. We watched this conversation closely and have heard forecasts for incremental natural gas demand driven by growing data center consumption that range from 3 BCF per day to 30-plus BCF per day by the year 2030. We will welcome increased demand anywhere within that range. Finally, we are pleased to once again be reporting results that exceed expectations. Our organization is highly focused on operational excellence, cost, safety, emission reduction, and on being responsible members of our communities. I want to acknowledge the tremendous work and dedication of our entire organization from the field on up. This includes, in addition to field, office staff, contractors, and service partners. At Cotera, we continually choose progress over comfort, and our strong culture of optimization, innovation, and financial discipline continues to be an important competitive advantage. With that, I'll turn the call over to Shane.