- Apache says it has discovered the equivalent of at least two billion barrels of oil in a new west Texas field that has the promise to become one of the biggest energy finds of the past decade.
Apache Corp. said it made a “significant” discovery in a Texas shale formation that holds enough crude oil to supply every refinery on the U.S. Gulf Coast for a year.
The Alpine High discovery in West Texas contains an estimated 3 billion barrels of oil and 75 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, Apache said in a statement on Wednesday. The asset is in the Delaware Basin, a subsection of the Permian Basin that has been a hotbed of acquisition activity among oil explorers this year.
Apache amassed drilling rights across 307,000 contiguous acres in the region at an average cost of $1,300 per acre, according to the statement. The Houston-based company already has drilled 19 wells in the area and has identified 2,000 to 3,000 more drilling sites.
To accelerate drilling in the discovery, Apache raised its full-year 2016 capital budget by 11 percent to $2 billion, according to the statement. Alpine High will account for about one-quarter of the company’s drilling budget this year.
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