Civitas cuts back on capex, launches $100 million savings push
The leaders of Civitas Resources Inc., Denver, are clipping the 2025 capital spending plan by about 8% and have launched an efficiency push targeting $100 million of annualized savings. Chief executive officer Chris Doyle and his team are sticking to their full-year production forecast for now but are prepared to cut back “should current market conditions deteriorate further.”
Civitas’ total production averaged 311,000 boe/d (141,000 b/d oil) from its operations in the Permian and Denver-Julesburg (DJ) basins. Those figures were down 14% and 12%, respectively, from fourth-quarter 2024—declines that had been expected and were mainly due to production declines in the DJ basin.
As more wells are turned in line this quarter and next, executives expect oil production to rise about 5% to 148,500 b/d and total production to be around 324,000 boe/d. Production guides for the year remain at 152,500 b/d and 330,000 boe/d, respectively.
“We have very strong confidence in the program, confidence in our ability to deliver our guidance, but we’re not blind to the continued volatility in the macro,” Doyle told analysts on a May 8 conference call. “If we see the macro deteriorating further, we’ll adjust activity […] But as we sit here today, unless we see sustained mid- to low-$50s in [the] oil price, we feel very confident in executing the rest of the year.”
Cost containment
Still, Civitas’ management is looking to contain costs amid the market uncertainty—as a number of other exploration and development companies have said recently they’re doing. They have taken out $150 million in planned capex from their earlier forecast of $1.8-1.9 billion and are pushing to lower production costs and reduce cycle times as well as rework commercial and midstream agreements.
The latter is expected to yield annual savings of at least $100 million. For 2025, the plan should produce $40 million in cost cuts.
Doyle and his team are still looking to sell about $300 million of assets this year as they look to cut $800 million from their net debt load. On the conference call, Doyle said things had looked promising on that front early in the year but falling oil prices took deals off the table. Beyond upstream, non-producing assets such as surface acreage and water infrastructure could also be divested.
“Given our diverse portfolio, we remain confident in achieving our investment target for the year,” Doyle said. “But let me be clear: We are not price takers. We’ll remain patient.”
On the flip side, Civitas—which paid $2.0 billion to buy Vencer Energy LLC last year (OGJ Online, Oct. 4, 2023) and before that entered the Permian basin by acquiring affiliates of Hibernia Energy III LLC and Tap Rock Resources LLC—will not be a buyer of assets for the foreseeable future. Doyle said the focus now is on execution and optimization and the company’s latest slide deck states clearly that “acquisitions are off the table.”
Civitas posted a net profit of $186 million in the first quarter, up from $176 million in the same period of last year. Operating net revenues fell to $1.19 billion from $1.33 billion and operating costs dipped to $879 million from $902 million but a $52 million derivative gain (versus a $110 million loss in early 2024) lifted the bottom line.
Shares of Civitas (Ticker: CIVI) were changing hands at $27.85 on the afternoon of May 9, up nearly 2% from the previous day’s close. Over the past 6 months, however, they have lost nearly 50% of their value, cutting the company’s market capitalization to about $2.6 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.
