RE: How I would create shareholder value A dividend would probably be good short-term but I don't know if Ithaca is very well suited to such a model long-term. These days the 'in' thing is to offer a dividend, but I think the only way this is sustainable long term is if you have a large asset base with low'ish declines and a cheap way to replenish production organically.
While Ithaca has the potential to be a cashflow machine, I think to really keep production level long-term is going to keep costing a lot of cashflow. If you start paying out a dividend just because your short-term cashflow is excellent, you're disregarding the fact that you acually need that cashflow (or at least, a large chunk of it) to fund production replacement.
Without really going and doing a bunch of math on it, I would suspect that Ithaca is just not very well suited to a dividend model and should not attempt it. Instead they should focus on using cashflow to keep production as high as possible for as long as possible. They'll hit 20,000 boepd with Stella, but it will cost a lot to stay there. There's probably a lot of shareholder value to be had if they can just show the market that they're capable of keeping the company above 20,000 boepd for many years.
I think there are probably a lot of dividend paying companies that would be better off long-term if they chose to not pay a dividend because they're actually not very well suited for it, except for the fact that investors these days go crazy for dividends.