Jordan Blum, editorial director, Hart Energy: We're here at Hart Energy's DUG Appalachia conference in Pittsburgh, and I'm joined by Tim Parker, the Chief Technical Officer of Encino Energy. Thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate it.

Tim Parker: Believe me. It's my pleasure.

JB: If I can get you to just start out by talking about the northern Utica?

TP: We've worked really hard over the last several, several years to demonstrate the economic viability of the oil play there, and have been really gratified that what we've achieved has been exactly in line with our models and believe that the play has legs, the economics are compelling, we're having a great time, the right team doing it, and everything that we could want to happen is happening.

JB: So you all are moving away from gas, but can I get you to discuss the balance and how that's pivoting more and more toward oil?

TP: Sure, absolutely. For us, we face the same problem that many Appalachian companies do, in we have limited export capacity. And the oil play, one has better margins than the gas play does, and so it makes economic sense one way or the other. But two, this means that we aren't subject to bumping up against export capacity limits. So the oil play makes a great deal of sense for us. Not only do we have the scale to do it, but the economics are really compelling.

JB: What strategies have gone into really proving that play from that crude standpoint?

TP: Yeah, we've worked really hard at doing things differently, and so we've taken a very hard look at the data and taken a very data-driven kind of an approach where we're using machine learning kinds of approaches to look at completion optimization, to look at how wells are drilled, how they ought to be produced, how they do produce, how we can predict well performance, and consequently predict economics. And so it's a very different kind of approach than I have ever used in my career, but it's a better approach. It's something that we are absolutely compelled by and truly excited by.

JB: As that oil production goes up, is there interest in growing more in that region or are you pretty comfortable with the acreage?

TP: When you have economics of the magnitude that we do, we want more of it.

JB: So definitely in growth mode.

TP: Yeah, absolutely.

JB: Very good. Well, thank you so much for joining us here at the Doug Appalachia Conference. I really appreciate it. To read and watch more, please visit online at hartenergy.com.

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