Investment-grade ratings, global scale and disciplined growth: Linda Cook explains why Harbour stand out
Within the evolving energy landscape, Harbour Energy remains focused on capital discipline, excellent operational performance and retaining the agility that has defined it since inception
Harbour’s diverse operations across five core countries, which includes exposure to Brent crude and European gas prices, elevate its position as one of the world’s leading independent oil and gas companies
Growth opportunities in the US, Argentina and Mexico are helping to unlock future value and access to international markets
During the 40th annual Barclays Energy-Power Conference in New York this week, Harbour Energy's CEO Linda Cook joined Lydia Rainforth, Managing Director and Head of European Energy Equity Research at Barclays, for a fireside chat. It included the following highlights:
Why investors are interested in Harbour
“I think it's a good time to think about investing in Harbour. What we hear from US investors is that now the US onshore shale play has matured, they're looking at where to invest next.
“There aren't many companies like Harbour that have scale and an investment-grade balance sheet. And Harbour has good exposure to both Brent and European gas prices.
“I think there's still room to run on European gas, and it may run for a while. We have a proven team that has a proven track record of executing and delivering and operating well. So, I think we're worth taking a look at.”
Operational control is part of Harbour’s success story
“I'm really proud of the team that we've built in Harbour Energy. They've done a phenomenal job from an operations standpoint. A lot of people, when they start a new oil and gas company, focus on non-operated [assets] – because it's easier.
“We decided to take the harder road. We felt like having operational control was important, and I'm really proud of the of the track record that the team has established in terms of reliability and efficiency and the targets we've set for ourselves around greenhouse gas emissions and our safety performance.
“The first half of 2026 was no exception from that. We had extremely high reliability, in particular, across our operated assets around the globe.
“We delivered some new developments in Norway ahead of schedule. And we completed the LLOG exploration acquisition [in the US] a bit sooner than we had anticipated.”
Harbour’s record half-year 2026 production
“The combination of all of those things led us to be able to upgrade our production guidance at mid-year to 490,000 to 500,000 barrels a day, which was fantastic.
“Like everyone, we had a relatively conservative outlook for commodity prices for 2026, and we established our first free cash flow guidance for this year at $600 million.
“At our mid-year results, we upgraded that to $1.8 billion, so we've tripled it with the combination of the good operational performance that we saw and the upgrade to our production outlook.
“Our team will stay focused on what we're doing now. We want to avoid that sort of knee-jerk reaction to changing our capital expenditure plans just because commodity prices might be higher or lower for one year to the next.
“So, the other option we have is to return cash flow to shareholders and pay down [debt]. Our plan is to do both of those."
Transforming Harbour into the world’s leading independent oil and gas company
“We made our first acquisition almost 10 years ago. We started out as a private company based in the US, and we raised money at a time when most people were actually spending money on non-producing US onshore shale acreage.
“We decided the smarter thing at that point was to do the opposite. This was a contrarian move, of course. But [we decided] to buy conventional producing assets outside the US because they were out of favour at the time, and we felt like there was a space in the market for another global independent because a number of them had been disappearing."
Harbour’s diverse portfolio offers exposure to a good mix of geographies and oil and gas
“We're now gone from zero, in terms of production, to 500,000 barrels a day through a series of acquisitions.
“We produced 509,000 barrels a day during the first half of 2026. We have a good mix of oil and gas. We'd always set out to be diverse, not to be in a single country or basin, and also not to be just oil or just gas.
“About 40% of our portfolio is oil. I know many people in the US, when I say that they're thinking, ‘Oh, that's too bad you don't have more oil exposure’, and then I go on to tell them, ‘actually we also have 40% exposure to European gas’.
“We work in five core countries. We like that amount of diversity from a geography standpoint. So, it's Norway, UK, US, Mexico, and Argentina. That feels good to us and all of them have interesting opportunities.
“We have an investment grade balance sheet which has been an aim of ours, and we have what we think is a really competitive shareholder distribution policy that allows our shareholders to benefit through distributions when commodity prices are elevated.”
Driving value through M&A at Harbour
“We look at things from a lot of different ways. It starts with the asset quality.
“Then we assess the gap that we're trying to fill in our existing portfolio, or we look at where we're trying to take the portfolio over time.
“At the very beginning of Harbour's journey – when we had nothing – it was about how do we get to scale in at least one basin. That opportunity happened to present itself in the UK, which is why we started there.
“We didn't have a goal to be a UK oil and gas producer. We had a goal to be a global diversified one. So, we saw an opportunity to get to scale in the UK, which we did.
“Then the focus really became on becoming more diverse. That is what drove the Premier oil transaction in 2021, when we became publicly listed.
“We set out to get scale outside of the UK, in some other countries, and that's what drove the Wintershall Dea transaction.
“It's an $11 billion deal that we completed. That got us to around 400,000 plus barrels a day and gave us scale in Norway, which was, one of the big prizes."
“The two most important assets in that transaction were the Norwegian portfolio, which is hard to buy on its own because there's so much competition for pure Norwegian portfolios. But with Wintershall Dea transaction, we were able to get that through a package transaction.
“But the most important asset for us in the Wintershall Dea transaction were the billions of dollars of investment grade bonds that gave us. That gave Harbour the investment grade balance sheet that we have today, which has been extremely useful. So, that was kind of the driver behind that transaction."
Harbour’s strategic entry into the US
“And then we've gone on to acquire LLOG Exploration in the US. We'd always wanted to be in the US, conventional offshore production, so the Gulf of America made perfect sense for us. But we had just not found the right opportunity even though we had kicked a lot of tires over the years.
“Going in, we knew that LLOG exploration had a great reputation in the Gulf. They have, I think, the best exploration track record in the last 10 years in the Gulf of America. I think they've been responsible for 33% of the discoveries in the last 10 years. They've shown a proven ability to develop deepwater projects.
“They have a good set of partners and relationships with their partners. They have a good portfolio of follow-on investment opportunities, so near infrastructure developments that lead to filling up the existing infrastructure. There is growth in production from the US.”
Argentina and Mexico will drive future growth
“We're quite excited about Argentina. I think everyone who is there is excited about it at this point in time.
“But we remain pretty clear eyed about it all. We're keeping the size of our investment there at the kind of the right scale for a company of our size.
“So, what we have today is about 70,000 barrels per day. The majority of it's coming from conventional producing assets offshore Tierra del Fuego, natural gas that feeds the domestic gas market.
“In addition to that, we have TotalEnergies-operated assets. The team there does a fantastic job bringing new existing discoveries on stream in order to keep the existing infrastructure full. So, it’s kind of a high return, good margin business.
“In Argentina’s Vaca Muerta formation, we already have an 11-rig programme going there now.
“Wells are getting cheaper. Every well we drill is getting cheaper and better than the well before, so the learning curve we saw in the US is alive and well in Argentina. More and more contractors are showing up with more and better equipment.
“Infrastructure is being built, new oil pipelines under construction, or gas pipes or new gas pipelines under construction. So that's happening.
“In addition, the first of what will be at least two LNG projects in the country is under construction. We have a 15% stake in it. It's called Southern Energy LNG.
“It will consist of two leased Golar floating LNG vessels, with a total of 6 million tonnes per annum. And why that's important for us is it gives us access to global gas markets for our gas."
“Turning to Mexico, we are now proud operators of two discoveries in Mexico," Linda explained.
"This wasn't the case before. Coincidentally, we picked up both interests through two different acquisitions that came as packages. So that together, we're now the biggest interest private interest holder in both of those projects.
“We have a 70% interest in Kan, and we have a 27% interest in Zama. Zama is the largest undeveloped discovery in Mexico. Both projects are oil and in shallow water.
“In Zama, we have Pemex as our partner. Pemex was the operator until late last year when they agreed to transfer operatorship to Harbour.
“Both projects are making some good progress now. We're about to enter front-end engineering design in both and – if all goes according to plan - they will be final investment decision-ready towards the end of next year.
“Then, once we get final cost estimates and understand what the schedule really looks like, we can then hopefully take positive investment decisions.
“But, for us, these are big projects. In total, almost 350 million barrels of reserves that Harbour shares across those projects together. Developing them simultaneously, or in close timing with each other, allows us to capture some synergies, in particular through the contracting strategy."
Harbour’s strong portfolio will sustain production at c.500,000 boepd
“The strength of our portfolio today means we’re able to keep production flat organically and we don't rely on – or need – to go out and do an acquisition right now.
“We’re really happy about that. There are a lot of catalysts coming towards us in the next 18 months that will help keep us that way.
“For example, more projects coming on stream in Norway, multiple well tie backs, the second rig in the US Gulf, the projects in Mexico heading to FID, and then the opportunities we have in Argentina are all very exciting.
“Like myself, everyone on our senior team spent a lot of their career at global oil and gas companies. So, we're used to running and managing more diverse global portfolios.
“We don't want to turn ourselves into a 'mini major' by implementing too many global processes and controls and introducing unnecessary bureaucracy. So, I probably spend more time making sure we're keeping ourselves lean and nimble.
“We’ll continue to maintain our position as a global diversified independent, half a million barrels per day, investment grade credit rating. Distributing cash to our shareholders.”