U.S. energy company Apache makes significant discovery in west Texas

Apache Corp., a U.S. petroleum and natural gas exploration and production company, announced on Wednesday that it has made significant discovery of oil and gas in the Permian Basin in west Texas.

The Houston-based company said in a statement that it has discovered an estimated 3 billion barrels of oil and 75 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the southern portion of the Delaware Basin, a subsection of the Permian Basin, which has been a hotbed of acquisition activity among oil explorers this year.

"Today's announcement is the culmination of more than two years of hard work by the Apache team," John Christmann, Apache chief executive officer and president, said in the statement.

"While other companies have focused on acquisitions during the downturn, we took a contrarian approach and focused on organic growth opportunities. These efforts have resulted in the identification of an immense resource that we believe will deliver significant value for our shareholders for many years," he said.

Calling the field the "Alpine High," Apache said it has drilled 19 wells and identified 2,000 to 3,000 future drilling locations in the Woodford and Barnett alone, expected to deliver a combination of rich gas and oil worth 4 million U.S. dollars to 20 million dollars per well.

To further speed up the development of the Alpine High, the company has increased its estimated capital spending this year by 200 million dollars to about 2 billion dollars.

Last year, Apache's total production was 195,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, of which 47 percent was in the United States.

Almost all of Apache's reserves in the United States are in the Permian Basin. Endi