The oil and gas world is abuzz over this week’s announcement of a massive oil find in the Davis Mountains of West Texas by Houston-based Apache Corporation.
Apache calls it the Alpine High discovery that could contain three billion barrels of oil and 75 trillion cubic feet of gas.
“Today’s announcement is the culmination of more than two years of hard work by the Apache team,” said John J. Christmann IV, Apache’s chief executive officer and president. “While other companies have focused on acquisitions during the downturn, we took a contrarian approach and focused on organic growth opportunities.”
His company did it by buying 352,000 gross acres at a cost of $1,300 an acre. The Alpine High sits in the southern part of the Delaware Basin and Apache has identified 2,000 to 3,000 drilling sites in just two of the five formations that make up the site. Those formations are the Woodford and Barnett.
“This is a world-class resource,” added Christmann. “We are very early in starting to understand how big this is going to be.”
He explained the firm has already drilled 19 wells in the area. To speed up the drilling in the region, Apache raised its full-year 2016 capital budget by 11 percent to $2 billion. The alpine High efforts will account for nearly one-quarter of the company’s drilling budget this year.
After making the announcement, shares in Apache rose by nine percent in Thursday’s trading.
