Range announces $941M in capital spending for 2018
Range Resources has established a 2018 capital spending budget of $941 million, which is expected to generate an annual production growth rate of around 11 percent.
The Fort Worth, Texas-based oil and gas exploration and production company, which has its Appalachian Basin operations headquartered in Southpointe, said in a news release about 80 percent of its 2018 capital will be spent in the Marcellus Shale strata, where the company sees it generating more than 25 percent growth from Range’s southwest Marcellus assets and full use of transportation capacity out of Appalachia boy the end of the year.
The new capital spending budget is $329 million less than last year’s outlay of $1.27 billion, but the company noted last year’s amount was approximately 10 percent above the planned $1.15 billion budget.
For the first time, the company provided a five-year outlook it said would deliver a compound annual growth rate of 13 percent on a debt- adjusted per share basis while generating about $1 billion of cumulative free cash flow.
The outlook assumes all of the production growth will be from Range’s Marcellus inventory, while its North Louisiana production is seen holding flat from year-end 2018 thourgh the remainder of the plan.
Range said at the end of the five-year outlook, Range would still have more than 3,200 locations in the core of the Marcellus alone.
“For Range, the flagship asset growth driver of the company will continue to be our large, high-quality, de-risked inventory in Southwest Pennsylvania,” said CEO Jeff Ventura in a statement. “Looking beyond the five-year outlook, as the industry exhausts its core inventory, we believe Range will be well positioned with a long runway of high-quality drilling locations from whicvh we can drive long-term value.”
The company announced separately Wednesday its proved reserves as of Dec. 31 increased by 26 percent from the prior year to 15.3 trillion cubic feet. During 2017, the company added 3.5 Tcfe of proved reserves, driven by 3.2 Tcfe from its Marcellus development.
Year-end 2017 proved reserves by volume were 67 percent natural gas, 30 percent natural gas liquids and 3 percent crude oil and condensate.