Occidental Petroleum Corporation

Good morning and welcome to the Occidental Third Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask your question, you may press star then one on your touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Neil Backhouse, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Grant. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for participating in Occidental's third quarter 2020 conference call. On the call with us today are Vicki Holub, President and Chief Executive Officer, Rob Peterson, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Ken Dillon, President, International Oil and Gas Operations. This morning, we will refer to slides available on the Investors section of our website. The presentation includes a cautionary statement on slide two regarding forward-looking statements that will be made on the call this morning. I'll now turn the call over to Vicki. Vicki, please go ahead.

Thank you, Neil, and good morning, everyone. Our accomplishments in the third quarter, including our continued operational excellence, progress in executing divestitures, and successful extension of our debt maturity have notably improved our financial position and provided us with the running room necessary to strengthen our balance sheet. The cost reduction measures we implemented earlier this year combined with the early completion of our overhead and OPEX synergies continue to bear fruit as evidenced by the almost $1.4 billion of free cash flow generated in the third quarter. The synergies and savings we previously detailed are now embedded in our ongoing operations and we expect to continue benefiting from our enhanced cost structure going forward. We are equipped to quickly adapt any future potential commodity price dips while being positioned to leverage the benefits of future uplifts. This morning I'll provide updates on our divestiture progress as well as our plans for increased activity as we lay the groundwork to stabilize our production. Rob will cover our financial results and current guidance and the runway we have created for deleveraging. Our third quarter free cash flow generation was driven by the strong performance of our businesses and diligent attention to margin preservation, continuing to reflect our focus on operational excellence. Our oil and gas operating costs of $6.04 per BOE and domestic operating costs of $5.38 per BOE demonstrate the lasting impact of our cost reduction measures as our domestic operating costs were significantly below our original expectations for this year. All our businesses delivered strong operational performance in the third quarter. We exceeded our production guidance with lower than expected operating and capital costs for the quarter. Production from continuing operations of 1.24 million VOE per day exceeded the midpoint of guidance by 12,000 VOE per day, despite an unusual number of named storms resulting in higher than expected production downtime in the Gulf of Mexico. Excluding the incremental impact from the storms, we would have achieved the high end of our production guidance. Our operational outperformance was primarily driven by strong well performance and continued improvements in operability in Permian resources. While we ran a lower than normal development activity set in the third quarter, our teams have continued to advance their understanding of the subsurface and are constantly applying newly acquired knowledge to improve our well and completion designs. In the Texas-Delaware, our team broke another Oxy record by bringing our company's best Permian well online in the Silvertip area, which is the former Anadarko acreage. This is just one of the latest examples of how we are leveraging the combined strengths of our assets and abilities to better position ourselves for success as macro conditions improve. In a moment, I'll touch on our plans to ramp up activity, but want to talk about take this opportunity to reiterate that we will retain a high degree of flexibility with our capital plans, allowing us to adapt to a changing macro environment. This flexibility, combined with our best-in-class operational results and leadership as a low-cost operator, will continue to be a competitive advantage. With the closing of the mineral and surface acreage in Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah, and reaching an agreement to sell our onshore assets in Columbia, We're on track to exceed the two-plus-billion-dollar target that we set for 2020. We have now closed or announced almost $8 billion of asset divestitures, net of taxes, since the close of the Anadarko acquisition. At the time of the acquisition, we established a $10 to $15 billion asset divestiture target to be completed within 12 to 24 months after close of the acquisition. Fifteen months later, we are closing in on the lower end of our original target despite 2020 possibly being the worst market for asset divestitures in the history of our industry. We're targeting an additional $2 to $3 billion of asset sales to be announced in 2020 or in the first half of 2021. With the completion of these additional divestitures, we will have met our divestiture target in less than 24 months from acquisition close. As we've said before, we will balance divestiture timing with value realization and will not sacrifice value to close transactions quickly. While we continuously review our portfolio to ensure we have the optimal mix of attributes, including free cash flow generation and capital efficiency and low decline, meeting our original divestiture target of at least $10 billion will mark the completion of asset sales on a large scale. The proceeds from our expected asset sales will continue to be applied towards debt reduction. These additional asset divestitures will be impactful in reducing debt and strengthening our balance sheet. We do recognize we must go further in reducing debt. Once our large-scale divestiture program is complete, debt reduction will be primarily driven by the utilization of free cash flow to meet debt maturities. Our Permian resources team delivered another record-setting quarter. As I mentioned, our Texas-Delaware team broke a Nazi Permian record in the third quarter by bringing a silver chip well on that hit a peak 24-hour rate of over 9,000 DOE per day. In New Mexico, our team set a new completion pumping time record of over 20 hours per day for a three-well pad, while our Midland Basin team set a new Permian-wide record by drilling over 7,500 feet in a single day. The wells in the Silversmith section, where the record well was completed, were brought online with an average total well cost that achieved our synergy target for Texas Delaware well cost reduction. These savings were achieved despite the wells being drilled before our full cost reductions were implemented. We expect to continue lowering costs based on our current drilling performance and future savings on hookups. Our other business units are also lowering DMC costs through design optimization, efficiency improvement, and collaboration with our vendors. Operational excellence means more than just consistently delivering strong well results, safely delivering superior well results along with consistently improving operability while driving down operating costs are the bedrock of our operating philosophy and are what we define as operational excellence. Our operating philosophy is instilled in our teams, continuously striving for improvement. This is evidenced by the impressive progress our D.J. Basin team has made in reducing downtime by 78% from the third quarter of 2019 to the third quarter of 2020, and our Midland Basin team's commitment to continuously lower operating costs, which are now below $5 per VOE. After a modest resumption of activity in the third quarter, we plan to increase activity more meaningfully in the fourth quarter and add two rigs in each of the Texas, Delaware, New Mexico, and DJ basins. We restarted activity with our JV partner, Echo Patrol, in the Midland Basin by running two rigs in the third quarter. And in the Gulf of Mexico, we returned a drill shift to work in early October. The return to a more normalized activity set will be achieved within our full year 2020 capital budget of $2.4 to $2.6 billion. Although we drastically reduced activity earlier this year, our proven development expertise remains intact. As we increase activity, we will maximize operating efficiencies to sustain production and maintain our industry-leading capital intensity. I'll now hand the call over to Rob, who will walk you through our financial results and current guidance and runways to be leveraging.