Travis D. Stice
Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer at Diamondback Energy
Thank you, Adam. And before we start with my prepared remarks this morning, I want to encourage each of you to please take advantage of one of our greatest privileges we have as Americans, our freedom to elect our representatives. Please take the time off your busy schedules today to go vote, if you've not already done so. Welcome to Diamondback's third quarter earnings call. A Diamondback, we pride ourselves on our execution. Our commitment to being the lowest cost operator in the Permian Basin has and will continue to position us for success through the cycle. The third quarter was no exception. In the quarter, we produced over 224,000 barrels of oil per day and generated approximately $1.7 billion in operating cash flow. Our capex was once again within our guidance range, leading to free cash flow of nearly $1.2 billion. As we previously announced, we increased our return of capital commitment and stated that beginning this quarter, we would return at least 75% of free cash flow back to our shareholders, up from at least 50% previously. At 75%, total capital return was nearly $875 million, with dividends totaling $403 million or $2.26 per share. The remaining $472 million went towards our opportunistic share repurchase program, where we bought back nearly 4 million shares at an average price of approximately $120 a share. To date, we've spent approximately $1.2 billion of our $4 billion buyback authorization, repurchasing nearly 6% of our shares outstanding since September of last year when we initiated our program.
In October, we announced the pending acquisition of the assets of FireBird Energy, a company with a large, contiguous position in the Midland Basin. We feel FireBird has right balance of cash flow and inventory and the acquisition is immediately accretive on all relevant per share financial metrics while providing a long runway of high-quality drilling opportunities. With over 350 locations, we expect to have well over a decade of run room at our projected one-rig development phase. In conjunction with the acquisition, we announced that we would sell at least $500 million of non-core assets by the year-end 2023, with net proceeds primarily used to pay down debt. Since then, we closed on a $155 million sale of non-core assets in the Delaware Basin, jump-starting our program and ensuring continuous improvement to our investment-grade balance sheet. We will continue to pursue strategic divestitures, including the sale of certain assets within our Rattler portfolio, generating unrealized value for our shareholders. In closing, we know our business. We know we have some of the best inventory in the United States with our low-cost operational machine in place. We have the unique ability to generate significant repeatable returns through the drill bit for decades to come. In 2019, we began co-developing our primary targets. Since then, we've learned how to optimize our development patterns and spacing, and as a result, are seeing material improvement in well productivity over the past 36 months.
In fact, our well performance this year is back at 2019 levels, when we were primarily targeting one-off wells in our -- zones, which while having great performance and economics and the potential to withstand significant components of our inventory, leading to material parent-child concerns down the line. Fortunately, we are well positioned for the future. We expect to close on the FireBird transaction at the end of November and slow the development pace on that asset from three rigs to one. We are working with our service providers to ensure that we have the most efficient and cost-effective personnel and equipment in place for next year, including the two e-fleet simul-frac crews we've secured from Halliburton, the first of which is already in the field and performing well. All of this will provide operational momentum as we move into 2023 we expect to deliver the same operational results you've come to expect from Diamondback. While we won't be giving detailed for the 2023 guidance today, we believe that we'll be able to generate low single-digit pro forma oil production growth next year by maintaining our current standalone activity levels plus the one additional FireBird rig. It's not easy to operate in this environment, but our size, scale and quality of the inventory uniquely position us to deliver differentiated results and create meaningful value for our shareholders. Before I open up for questions, I want to address all the Diamondback employees that are on the phone. At Diamondback, we've just celebrated our 10 years as a public company, growing from a $500 million market cap to almost $30 billion today. The people around me this morning and sometimes me individual get too much credit for the success. It's you, the men and women of Diamondback that deserve the credit. It's your pursuit of excellence, your desire to be the very best version of yourself, your dedication to integrity that is responsible for our success. It remains my privilege to represent you.
Thank you for all that you do. Operator, please open the line for questions.