EOG Resources Inc., Houston, is targeting roughly 6% total production growth in 2025 while keeping capital spending flat.
Fourth-quarter 2024 production totaled a little less than 1.1 MMboe/d, which was a year-over-year increase of 7% and was driven by a 14% pop in natural gas volumes. That lifted EOG’s full-year average to 1.06 MMboe/d, with roughly 491,000 boe/d of that being oil and condensates.
For the first 3 months of this year, chairman and chief executive officer Ezra Yacob and his team are planning production of 1.06-1.1 MMboe/d. For the year, the midpoint of the forecast is a little more than 1.1 MMboe/d. Oil growth is forecast to be nearly 3% while Yacob and his fellow executives are calling for natural gas volumes to grow another 12% to 2.18 bcfd.
EOG is forecasting 2025 capital spending will be $6.0-6.4 billion, with more activity planned for the Utica and Dorado basins while plans call for teams to complete 375 net wells in the Delaware basin, down from 385 in 2024. The company’s capex finished last year a shade above $6.2 billion.
“We’re operating at an optimal level in both our foundational plays and we’ve got opportunities to improve our emerging plays with higher activity,” Yacob said on a Feb. 28 conference call with analysts.
Emerging-plays, international
Included in that emerging-plays category is more investment internationally. EOG has been active in Trinidad & Tobago for three decades and plans to, among other work, drill four net wells there this year with joint-venture partner bp. Executives also will begin work in Bahrain on a gas-focused joint venture with Bapco Energies and expect to begin drilling there in second-half 2025. In all, those two regions will get $100 million more in capital than they did in 2024.
The goal is to complete 605 net wells this year compared to 618 last year while running 24 rigs, which is one fewer than in 2024. On the conference call, chief operating officer Jeff Leitzell said longer lateral lengths and continuing efficiency gains should help lower well costs “in the low single digits” this year.
In fourth-quarter 2024, EOG produced a net profit of $1.25 billion on total revenues of nearly $5.6 billion. Those numbers were down from $2.0 billion and $6.4 billion, respectively, in late 2023, due in large part to the average crude oil and condensate price it received falling below $72 from more than $80 in the prior-year quarter.
Shares of EOG (Ticker: EOG) were down about 4% to $125.32 in afternoon trading Feb. 28. They’ve also fallen slightly over the past 6 months, which has trimmed EOG’s market capitalization to about $70.5 billion.
Geert De Lombaerde | Senior Editor
A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has more than two decades of business journalism experience and writes about markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications Healthcare Innovation, IndustryWeek, FleetOwner, Oil & Gas Journal and T&D World. With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati and later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal. Most recently, he oversaw the online and print products of the Nashville Post and reported primarily on Middle Tennessee’s finance sector as well as many of its publicly traded companies.
