The day WTI rises again to $50 per barrel, James Volker, chairman, president and CEO of Whiting Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: WLL), said his plan is a mixture of caution and temperance.

While $50 would encourage Whiting to increase volumes, ramping up rigs and crews won’t be immediate.

“We’d just like to watch that for at least a 90-day period if and when $50 is hit,” Volker said during an April 28 earnings call. “Most folks I’m aware of, we’d like to see that $50 number stay there for a quarter or so before moving ahead.”

Volker made the comments following Whiting’s April 27 announcement that it had entered into a joint venture (JV) with an undisclosed party to continue drilling and completing wells in the Bakken.

The company said it entered into a wellbore participation agreement on April 14. The private party will pay 65% of drilling and completion costs in exchange for a 50% working interest in 44 gross Williston Basin wells. Whiting said it received $30.7 million in April for wells already in progress.

With the agreement, Whiting will continue to run two drilling rigs and add a completion crew. The agreement will add production, proved reserves but keep the company’s capex flat.

“We secured outside investment on favorable terms through a wellbore-only participation agreement,” Volker said.

In February, Whiting had planned to suspend completion activities in the Williston beginning in the second quarter. The company said it now anticipates that by the end of 2016 about 30 drilled but uncompleted (DUC) wells will remain.

As of December, Whiting had 161 gross (77.4 net) operated and nonoperated wells in the process of drilling, completing or waiting on completion.

While analysts welcomed the JV, Whiting’s miss on Wall Street forecasts had some analysts contemplating risks the Denver company faces.

Baird Energy Research said the company’s first quarter was “incrementally negative” in an April 27 report.

Whiting posted a net loss of $171.7 million, about $8.8 million greater than Baird anticipated.

Several analysts also said that the company’s capex spending rose well above expectations. Whiting spent $260.8 million on exploration, drilling and other expenses–$100 million more than Baird projected.

“We view the company as lagging behind the operational gains of peers at present,” Baird said.

Volker said about $34 million in overspend came from billing by operators for activity stretching back to 2014.

“We have recently been billed as other operators got around to finally billing us,” he said. Volker noted on the call that Whiting has $1.5 billion in liquidity and no major debt maturities until 2019.

Whiting also missed production expectations, producing 109.5 thousand barrels of oil per day in the first quarter of 2016—about 3% shy of Baird and Wall Street expectations.

Whiting noted that its overall production averaged 146,770 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d). The company also reached a new bank credit agreement and exchanged $477 million of bond debt into convertible debt.

Analysts at Seaport Global Securities LLC were unimpressed, rating the company as Sell.

In addition to overspending, Whiting completed just nine wells in the first quarter in order to hit its original 26-well completion program in 2016.

“The Bakken JV announced with this release was also surprisingly non-impactful,” said analyst Mike Kelly.

Whiting raised its production guidance to between 131.4 Mboe/d and 136.9 Mboe/d. With an increase of about 85% in the number of net wells set to be completed, Kelly said he expected the midpoint of production guidance to rise higher than 0.9%.

Whiting is continuing to sift through its 1,400 well inventory for refrack candidates. So far, about 40 candidates have been identified.

Darren Barbee can be reached at dbarbee@hartenergy.com.