By: Adrian Hedden – Carlsbad Current Argus – A Houston-based oil and gas company sold off multiple Permian Basin properties to make more than $1 billion last week amid continued growth in the U.S. market in the wake of Russia’s invasion with Russia and the global decline in COVID-19.
APA Corporation announced two deals centered around the western Delaware sub-base of the Permian in southeast New Mexico and West Texas.
On March 7, APA closed on the sale of $805 million worth of mostly non-operated properties across the region in both states with a daily production capacity of about 7,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.
Following that deal, APA on March 11 closed on the sale of 4 million shares of its subsidiary oil and gas midstream company Kinetik for about $224 million.
The company also planned to spend $100 million of the proceeds for new well drilling and completions in the Alpine High play of the Delaware, where Kinetic has gas and natural gas liquids gathering and processing rights.
APA President John Christman said the deals were part of the company’s goal to drive up returns to investors and cut its debt.
“Completion of these transactions reflects the ongoing streamlining of our portfolio,” Christman said. “We remain committed to returning Free Cash Flow to shareholders and continuing to strengthen the balance sheet. As such, we plan to direct a portion of these sales proceeds toward debt reduction.”
And as operations and transactions in the basin grew, so too did efforts to mitigate air pollution brought on by extraction as APA subsidiary Apache Corporation announced a partnership with LongPath Technologies for continuous air monitoring in the Permian.
LongPath’s system monitors for methane leaks as part of Apache’s work at reducing its emissions.
The two companies have been working together in Fall 2021, reducing emissions since, per an APA news release.
“At Apache, we are committed to reducing emissions and we’re looking for a technology that provided real-time monitoring and volume quantifications,” said Jessica Jackson, vice president of environment, health, and safety.
“LongPath’s technology provides our teams with the data needed to achieve meaningful emissions reductions while meeting global energy needs in more innovative and sustainable ways.”
LongPath Chief Executive Officer Ian Dickinson said working with Apache will allow the company to expand its air monitoring operations and address the environmental impacts of oil and gas.
“In Apache, we have a partner who has focused on how to make continuous monitoring actionable and efficient,” he said.
“The Apache team’s emissions mitigation workflow represents a viable long-term solution for ingesting real-time emissions data and getting root cause analysis and solutions down to a science.”
