Ovintiv raises 2026 guidance on productivity gains
The leaders of Ovintiv Inc., Denver, raised full-year forecasts for oil, condensates, and natural gas liquids production after a better-than-expected second quarter they credited to ongoing refinements of the company’s operations in the Permian and Montney basins.
The Ovintiv team now expects that their operations will average total production of 630,000-645,000 boe/d across all of 2026, a forecast where the midpoint is nearly 1% higher than in May. Production of oil and condensate from the Permian is now expected to be about 125,000 boe/d, up 5,000 boe/d from nearly 3 months ago. Overall NGL output, meanwhile, is now forecast to be at least 83,000 boe/d, up from 80,000 boe/d, with the upper end of its range still at 85,000 boe/d.
President and chief executive officer Brendan McCracken told investors that the new guidance reflects a 4% per-share increase in production without ramping up activity or capital spending, which is expected to be about $2.3 billion for the full year.
In second-quarter 2026, Ovintiv’s oil and condensate production was 206,000 boe/d, about 3,500 boe/d above what executives had guided to after the first quarter. Similarly, natural gas liquids output was 82,000 boe/d, 6% higher than the midpoint of guidance for the period.
Speaking to analysts and investors on July 24 after Ovintiv reported its second-quarter results, McCracken and his team said the efficiency gains stem from a cocktail of innovations around well designs, development patterns, and the usage of proppants and surfactants, among other things.
“It starts with the culture, that relentless curiosity, not just to come up with innovations ourselves, but to observe them in what’s happening around us. We have this saying in the company that the only infinite rate of return is learning from somebody else’s capital,” McCracken said.
“We really have built that into our culture. It obviously comes from the expertise side, where we’ve created this institutional capability to be able to execute at this leading edge, and that’s really valuable. You can’t replace the years of experience that allow us to perform the logistics, the supply chain, and the engineering geoscience.”
Ovintiv’s inventory of high-return inventory in the Permian now stands at 12-15 years of production and is 15-20 years in the Montney. McCracken noted that the company’s teams have “essentially replaced the 2026 drilling program,” which comprises about 130 wells turned in line in the Permian and roughly 135 in the Montney, by identifying Barnett locations on existing Permian acreage and testing several Montney locations for density.
Ovintiv generated net income of $456 million on total revenues of a little more than $3.0 billion, increases from year-ago numbers of $307 million and $2.3 billion. Operating profits, which don’t include a $337 million loss on the divestiture of the company’s former Anadarko basin assets, jumped to $994 million from $511 million in second-quarter 2025.
Shares of Ovintiv (Ticker: OVV) moved higher on the earnings results and executives’ conference call commentary. Around midday on July 24, they were up about 3% to $63.24. Year to date, they’ve surged more than 60%, pushing the company’s market capitalization to nearly $18 billion.
About the Author
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.