Occidental Petroleum is eyeing more Permian production. In its earnings call this week, the company said plans for 2018 include 40% growth in its Permian resources business. However, analysts couldn’t overlook a production miss and the company’s first-quarter guidance for Permian resources. Cowen and Company analysts said, “strong Permian wells, a new development area, and potential for share buyback will be overshadowed by fourth-quarter 2017 production miss and lower than expected first-quarter 2018 guidance." Addressing the production miss, Occidental CFO Cedric Burgher pointed to production-sharing contracts on the international side and third-party downtime in the Permian.

In A&D news, WildHorse Resource Development will sell its Louisiana assets as the E&P shifts to a pure-play strategy in the Eagle Ford Shale. In North Louisiana, the company agreed to sell 90,000 net acres in Webster, Claiborne, Lincoln, Jackson and Ouachita Parishes to an undisclosed buyer for $217 million. In an unrelated agreement, WildHorse also announced a smaller bolt-on acquisition of Eagle Ford acreage in South Texas.

Linn Energy’s asset selling tour continues with an agreement to sell about 28,000 net acres of conventional assets in West Texas for $119.5 million. So far, Linn has sold more than $1.8 billion in assets as it prepares to divide into three companies, including one in the Oklahoma stack.

In Houston, the annual NAPE summit showed signs of renewed confidence and what many referred to as “cautious optimism.” We sat down with Allen Gilmer, DrillingInfo’s co-founder and executive chair while there. “You know I am excited that companies are still doing a lot of exploration and it’s the small companies. There’s a couple of the bigger guys, EOG is always looking at different things. But the smaller companies, how do you extend, going lateral, and fracking zones that have never been fracked before,” says Gilmer.

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