Operator
Operator
Welcome to the Apache Corporation second quarter 2009 earnings conference call. Today's presentation will be hosted by Mr. Tom Chambers, Vice President of Corporate Planning and Investor Relations.
APA Corporation (APA)
Q2 2009 Earnings Call· Thu, Jul 30, 2009
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Operator
Operator
Welcome to the Apache Corporation second quarter 2009 earnings conference call. Today's presentation will be hosted by Mr. Tom Chambers, Vice President of Corporate Planning and Investor Relations.
Tom Chambers
President
This morning we reported second quarter net income of $443 million or a $1.31 per diluted share, and cash flow of $1.26 billion. On today's call we'll have four speakers making prepared remarks prior to taking questions. Steve Farris our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer will open up the session, followed by Rod Eichler our Co-Chief Operating Officer and President of International, John Crum our Co-Chief Operating Officer and President of North America, and Roger B. Plan our President. Today's discussion may contain forward-looking estimates and assumptions and no assurance can be given that those expectations will be realized. A full disclaimer can be found on our website. Any non-GAAP numbers that we discuss, such as adjusted earnings, cash flow from operations, or cost incurred will be identified as such with the reconciliation located on our website at www.apachecorp.com. With that, I'll turn the call over to Steve.
G. Steven Farris
Management
I'd like to give you some highlights of our performance during the quarter and then I'd like to comment a little bit on the outlook for the rest of the year. Apache's performance during the quarter reflects the clear benefits of our geologic and geographical diversity, as well as our balanced product mix. Apache's production grew at 7.1% over the previous quarter and up 6.5% from the second quarter of 2008. And this strong growth performance was broad-based across our portfolio. On the exploration side, we had yet another outstanding quarter. Our continued exploration success in Egypt brings our discoveries tested to date bear at about 70 million barrels of oil equivalent on a crude [plus] probable basis. I might point out the majority of that is oil. And you'll hear shortly from John Crumb, we also had important exploration successes during the quarter in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Ootla resource play in Canada. On the development front, we achieved our objectives during the quarter bringing the Geauxpher deepwater project on stream in the Gulf of Mexico, and completing the ramp of our latest new gas facilities in Egypt. In addition our North Sea team tested a new development well at 10,500 barrels a day in the 40s field. This is pretty amazing when you consider that 40s was producing approximately 40,000 barrels per day when we acquired it in 2003. We'll continue to work through our expanding development drilling inventory there, which at the moment, consists of 77 unique targets. I will note quickly that we're pleased with our ability to deliver reductions in our operating cost during the quarter. I certainly wouldn't say we're satisfied on that front so far. We continue to push the service companies and push ourselves for even greater efficiencies. Turing…
Rodney J. Eichler
Management
I would now like to provide a quick overview of our main developments in our international regions. During the second quarter of production from Apache's International Operations with 302,700 barrels of oil equivalent per day, a 9.5% increase over first quarter. The production increase can be attributed to drilling successes in Egypt and the North Sea, as well as completion of facility repairs at Australia's Marinas Island, and successful commissioning of new gas plants in Egypt. In Egypt, net production was 158,100 barrels of oil equivalent per day, a 15.9% increase over first quarter. The region achieved new daily production records for gross oil and condensate at 163,000 barrels per day, and gross gas at 754 million per day. On the exploration side, we completed drilling and/or testing operations on five new wildcat wells resulting in two new field discoveries during the second quarter. Two potential discoveries at Cordova and Chelsea will be tested within the next few weeks, and three Jurassic wildcat wells are presently drilling. Apache has a 100% contractor working interest in all of these wells. Some brief highlights on the two discoveries and significant appraisal and development wells in the greater call to concessionary are as follows. The [Nies] 1X wildcat and the call to offset concession log 82 feet of oil pay in the Jurassic Safa sand section. The Safa tested at 1,460 barrels of oil per day. A plan of development has been submitted to the government and production expected to commence the fourth quarter. The Falcon-1X wildcat in the Matruh Concession logged 38 net feet of pay in the Jurassic Safa sand, 47 feet in the AEB6 sands, and 44 feet in the AEB3D sands. The [S] rates were 11 million a day in the Safa, 35 million a day and 2,000 barrels…
John A. Crum
Management
Starting with our central region, our central region produced 87,700 barrels of equivalent per day in the second quarter, down 2.2% from the first quarter due primarily to natural well declines with little new drilling activity. The region rig activity was deliberately slowed in the first two quarters of 2009 to wait until drilling and well service costs dropped to a level more consistent with lower oil and gas prices. With reduced activity levels, the region concentrated on building their inventory of opportunities and proceeded with lower cost projects targeting primarily oil such as waterflood expansions. In spite of the production drop, the regions cost reduction efforts resulted in LOE costs per Boe dropping by 1.8% during the quarter. An example of the project we proceeded with was at our [Means] Grayburg Waterflood project in Andrews County, Texas. We began a waterflood expansion that will ultimately entail seven conversions to injection and two new producing wells. This project is expected to develop over 700,000 barrels of oil. Field work on the conversion started during the second quarter with three of the conversions. The remainder of the work will be completed in the second half. Also, further evaluation of our recent Marathon Permian basin acquisition, which closed late last quarter, confirmed attractive drilling targets for oil, especially in southeast New Mexico where we just [sanctioned] 10 well programs. We are particularly enthusiastic about our position in the emerging horizontal Granite Wash gas play in the Anadarko Basin. Most of you would be aware that this has been a core area for Apache for decades. We own interests in almost 2,000 acres in the play area. We have drilled more than 100 successful vertical Granite Wash wells over the past five years and know these rocks well. Dozens of horizontal wells have…
Roger B. Plank
Management
Apache turned in strong second quarter results in the face of oil and gas realization that were cut in half from a year ago. Mitigating the price impact were the higher production and lower costs mentioned earlier. Relative to last years second quarter our 6.5% production increase was accompanied by 16% lower operating expenses or $250 million reduction. The progress in our results is most evident when compared to the first quarter. Earnings adjusted for foreign currency fluctuations on deferred taxes and impairments more than doubled to $474 million or $1.41 per share and cash flow jumped 28% to $1.25 billion for the quarter. Frankly, these results beat even our internal expectations for several reasons. Our 7% production increase sequentially was stronger than anticipated primarily in our Egyptian and Gulf regions. Higher production contributed to substantially lower than anticipated cash cost per unit produced. But the primary thing that differentiates Apache's results this quarter is our strategy of diversified production and revenue sources. We're all painfully aware that North American gas prices fell significantly during the quarter, in our case realizations dropped some $0.73 per Mcf or 16% from the first quarter. Given the market's myopic focus on North American natural gas it may come as somewhat of a surprise that Apache's equivalent realizations for oil and gas rose 19% during the quarter. Obviously being half oil helped. Realizations climbed 37% from first quarter to $58.15 per barrel. Interestingly, however, our international gas which has now grown to over 40% of our worldwide gas production, also increased in price by 8%. This, coupled with higher production, enabled Apache's second quarter gas revenues to stay within $1 million of per quarter levels at $560 million. By holding the line on gas revenue we were able to enjoy the full benefit of…
G. Steven Farris
Management
And I'd like to close maybe on the same vein that Roger ended his, to re-emphasize the point that we feel obviously is sufficiently recognized in the market, and that's the competitive strength of our portfolio balance. Roger pointed that NYMEX gas price fell 26% from the previous quarter, yet our barrel of oil equivalent revenues increased by 19%, and that's both because of our international gas prices increasing as well as oil, obviously, increasing. It's been brought to my attention recently that we are the largest international producer among U.S. independents, whether you look at production outside the United States or production outside North America. Further, our production is equally balanced between oil and gas and we have a deep resource and opportunity base for all our regions, given our position of strength as a result of many years of staying true to our contrarian spirit, our long-term perspective, discipline and operation focus. We continue to be dedicated to generate long-term growth and value for our shareholders and with that we'll turn it over to questions.
Operator
Operator
(Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from Brian Singer – Goldman Sachs. Brian Singer – Goldman Sachs: I wanted to follow up on your point on acquisitions. I just wanted to see where you stand in terms of the importance to Apache, how bid-asks are and the importance of adding new U.S. shale assets to the portfolio?
G. Steven Farris
Management
Well, everybody continues to believe that Mecca's out there, Brian, somewhere and the bid and the ask will stay pretty far apart. Although I will tell you we don't go to auctions so most of the things we look at are negotiated so that the auction process doesn't enter into the picture. With respect to shale gas in the United States, obviously we continue to look. I would think that's probably something that you'd have to look up and we'd tell you we did it rather than explain that we're doing it. Brian Singer – Goldman Sachs: And then just thinking about Australia, can you talk about how you're thinking, or your latest thoughts on sourcing Julimar/Brunella, etc. and the potential participation and status of LNG liquefaction?
G. Steven Farris
Management
Well, I don't think it's any secret that there's two competing LNG facilities that are going in there, by two major LNG producers in the world, and we are very closely approaching a time then when we're going to have to get to the point where we decide which one that we are going to go with, and that should probably happen this year. Brian Singer – Goldman Sachs: And do you think you would sign a supply contract for off-take or participate in that at the same time? Or would it initially be more of a commitment to participate just in the liquefaction with a supply contract to be signed at a later date?
G. Steven Farris
Management
Well, I think they have to go together to some extent. You certainly don't want to commit to the facility – where both of those projects are today is they're going into final engineering and design and a FID or actually investment decision, final investment decision probably won't be made for 18 months. So what we're looking at right now is which party that makes the most sense for us, assuming we don't take it to the domestic market, which party to us makes the most sense for us in the long term. And then it's going to be a process.
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from Doug Leggate – Howard Weil Inc. Doug Leggate – Howard Weil Inc.: A couple of questions, first one is on Egypt and the second one is on the IPLA. First of all on Egypt, it seems that we all get kind of caught up looking at nonconventional opportunities here in the U.S., but you've obviously had extraordinary success over there. Can you kind of characterize, where are you now in terms of your prospect inventory? How should we think about the risking the reserves potential and ultimately can you just kind of characterize what the drilling looks like, and not just this year but whether or not you're going to recommit additional capital given how successful that program's been? And my follow-up is on the IPLA.
Roger B. Plank
Management
Well, in Egypt the project portfolio remains very robust. We'll drill 19 wildcat wells this year. We've put seven or eight down and 12 yet to go. It's a combination of oil and gas program there for the exploration drilling. That will be out of a total program of about 160 wells for the year. We have a substantial inventory. At any given time there's at least twice that number and it's constantly replenished with additional opportunities as we progress with additional treaties, seismic surveys over our large concession holdings in the western desert. Doug Leggate – Howard Weil Inc.: Roger, are these the street targets? I mean, is it as simple as saying typically we're looking at, I don't know, 5 million, 6 million barrel type of targets, oil equivalent, or is it something much more complex than that, given the multiple [plays] that you've seen over there?
Roger B. Plank
Management
Well, it ranges from the 3 million to 5 million barrel. I'm sure there's plenty of those up to the multi DCF-type, [Kasser] type opportunities, and the Matruh development lease is an example. We have a very consistent track record there. Just about every accumulation that we have tapped there – our 3Ds – has been in the 12 million to 14 million barrel of oil equivalent range in terms of recoverable size. And the key thing in each of the western desert is repeatability, both of the individual prospects as well as the amount of up-hole pace, which we frequently encounter being able to get and provide many work over opportunities in the future pre-completion. Doug Leggate – Howard Weil Inc.: Well, I guess the question sort of then, Steve, is are you ready to recommit capital or additional capital? Or is the program just going to continue at that kind of current run rate?
G. Steven Farris
Management
Well, obviously we went – our cash flow across this company went down about 50%, so what we cut capital about $3 billion out of last year's capital, somewhat across the board although there were a couple of variables, Egypt being one of them that wasn't cut nearly as much. We spent about $1.5 billion in 2008. We'll spend about $750 million to $800 million in Egypt this year and I can't imagine next year's program will be anything less than that for 2010. And the reason we spent so much in 2008 was because we had those two gas plants. We paid – the majority of the money that we – that those plants cost, really hit us in 2008. Doug Leggate – Howard Weil Inc.: And if I could just ask a follow-up then, this question's for John; it's on the IPLA. I guess the comments on hedging, is that how we should think about the sort of ceiling on your activity level in terms of the production levels you expect to get to? And I imagine the economics are still pretty challenging, or should we think you're going to go a little more aggressive up there than those volumes currently suggest?
John A. Crum
Management
Doug, we're continuing to look at that obviously as we go forward. The bottom line is we felt pretty comfortable putting those hedges in place. It certainly makes the early part of this program pretty robust economics. Looking out further we obviously are trying to push this to make the numbers make it without a hedging program. So obviously if it works that way it'll work quite well if you hold gas prices a little higher. So that's been the drill. We continue to find ways to reduce the costs there, but there is no question you need to have reasonable gas prices to make this thing become the play we want it to be. Doug Leggate – Howard Weil Inc.: Are we at breakeven yet, John?
John A. Crum
Management
Well, we think so, but it depends what you need as a gas price, so if I just had to characterize a number we think we need Henry Hub to be somewhere in the $3.50 to $4.00 range for us to kind of come out even. Anything less than that we're going to have to get our cost out.
Operator
Operator
Our next question is from David Heikkinen – Tudor Pickering & Co. David Heikkinen – Tudor Pickering & Co: Just a quick question on IPLA, where are you expecting costs to go, just talking about the 16 days and the number of stages?
John A. Crum
Management
Yes, we're really feeling pretty good about what the two teams have been able to do with our drilling efforts. Obviously that, getting less days out there will pull your cost down pretty quickly. I will say, though, just to make sure I'm kind of covering this, we tend to turn around and add another frac job every time we save a little money on the drilling side, so in the end we feel pretty comfortable that we're still in this $9 million to $10 million completed and tied in Canadian dollars for a well. But as we're able to continue to drop those costs, then you've got to make then the decision should you add another frac job to the horizontal or should you go ahead and save the money and go to the next well? David Heikkinen – Tudor Pickering & Co: On the capacity side, I guess about the hedging volumes or hedging equating to volume. Can you remind us just the pipeline and plant capacity that you have committed or tied up?
John A. Crum
Management
Yes, so what we have is a pipeline that will handle about 700 million feet a day coming out of the Horn River Basin. Now several other of the industry partners are part of that as well. Apache's portion of that is a 30% ownership, so that would certainly make in this first stage it would be over 200 million of capacity down that line. We have an additional probably 50 million capacity down through our old Missile plant arrangements. What we tried to do here is we tried to tie this to some commitments we made to Spectra for processing and then to TCPL as they bring in a new transport line that will take gas to the east. Those are all set to come in sort of 2012. David Heikkinen – Tudor Pickering & Co: And then on the Gulf of Mexico, looking at Geauxpher volumes, can you talk some about how that ramp in production has occurred and kind of some of the competitive drainage and what the current rates are? How are you thinking about the project right now?
John A. Crum
Management
Well, obviously we're quite pleased with Geauxpher itself and we find ourselves in a pretty good shape on competitive drainage situation because we've got a little better capacity coming out of there then the offset players. But that said, I guess you've got to see where this is going, obviously, when you're making $105 million a day you can drain a lot of gas pretty quickly. It will decline at some point. David Heikkinen – Tudor Pickering & Co: Are there additional fault blocks or additional opportunities to drill the Geauxpher or how do you think about testing around there.
John A. Crum
Management
Yes, there is. The issue for us is our interest is lower in the offset so we're not in a real rush to do something right now. David Heikkinen – Tudor Pickering & Co: On the exploration side, just remind jus what you have going in the Gulf of Mexico. I know Arden was drilling, any other exploration that we ought to be thinking about.
John A. Crum
Management
Arden was drilling and it has resulted in a dry hole. We have no other rank exploration going on at this time. We continue to run a couple of the platform rigs working our kind of traditional areas. David Heikkinen – Tudor Pickering & Co: Thinking through Gulf of Mexico a lot of smaller parties have insurance issues and rig availability issues as you go into hurricane season. Can you remind us do you have business interruption insurance or do you have any insurance, Roger or John, as we get into hurricane season?
Roger B. Plank
Management
We have business interruption but not in the Gulf of Mexico this year. David Heikkinen – Tudor Pickering & Co: It was too expensive?
Roger B. Plank
Management
It got way too expensive. We have physical damage insurance through Oil Insurance Limited in Bermuda as a mutual, and that's up to $250 million in coverage above the deductible.
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from Leo Mariani – RBC Capital Markets. Leo Mariani – RBC Capital Markets: I was wondering if there was any update on the Eagle Ford Shale if you guys have done anything there recently, picked up any acreage or drilled any new wells.
G. Steven Farris
Management
Well, we have a pretty good acreage position in there presently we have about 450,000 acres through the oil side and some in the gas side. In fact, we're re-looking that. We're not drilling a well at the present time. We're re-looking pressures and core analysis to try to figure out we drilled a horizontal well that was a very marginal well, frankly, on the gas side. Leo Mariani – RBC Capital Markets: Jumping over to the North Sea, your latest development well was obviously one of the advanced to ever drill over there at 10,500 barrels a day. Is there any difference that you guys need with that well and if you kind of consistently had better success recently apart from that [inaudible].
John A. Crum
Management
We've picked a number of these targets inventory that Steve referenced earlier based on the continuing valuation of the 4D seismic that we run out there, in which case we look for potential unswept areas for the long-term water flooding activity in the field, and the 4D63 Charlie 63 well was no exception. In fact, it was using 34 meters of [hasting], which was even larger than our pre-drill expectation. You can't see everything on the seismic and even you have to detail the geology as best you can between the wells and the seismic information. So it was a very pleasant surprise we have really a large inventory and we hope to be able to find a similar opportunity like this and then match the 77 wells that are yet to be drilled. Leo Mariani – RBC Capital Markets: A follow-up question here on the Horn River, [Hadean] gas bonds were up pretty nicely sequentially from the first quarter to the second quarter. Did you guys get contribution from the Horn River there or was that just your regular way of winter drilling program.
John A. Crum
Management
That was pretty much our winter drilling program. Obviously, we put some of those wells from the '08 program on late last year. These volumes we just got we really just got those on production in July.
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from Joseph Allman – JP Morgan. Joseph Allman – JP Morgan: On the Horn River Basin play the shale, when you talk about 10 Bcf or more per well, are you talking about in a specific area or do you really think across your acreage position you could average 10 or more Bcf per well?
John A. Crum
Management
We have a pretty extensive acreage position there with our partner in Canada we've got well over 400,000 acres, so I guess I will temper that with saying we feel pretty good about that number in the Two Island Lake area. So we've drilled a lot of wells across the acreage and really have had some fairly consistent results. So feeling pretty good about it overall, but I think I have to tell you that in the Two Island Lake area we're pretty confident in these numbers. Joseph Allman – JP Morgan: So the 28 or so wells that you've drilled in the I think 10 that you've got producing, all of those are in the Two Island Lake area?
John A. Crum
Management
No, three of those are in what we would have called the Dilly area up to the northeast, and it is true that up in that are you would expect that the shale's are slightly thinner but not much thinner. In the Two Island Lake area we are concentrating our activity there primarily to feed infrastructure and reduce our overall costs. So we're basically working in the same area together to keep our costs down. Joseph Allman – JP Morgan: And the Two Island Lake area, what kind of acreage position is specified to that area?
John A. Crum
Management
Well, I think you've seen the maps that we've got out on that, but that's kind of right in the heart of our acreage. I mean we've got acreage south of there and north of there it's the biggest chunk of that 400,000 acres would be in this general. Joseph Allman – JP Morgan: So in that area have you tested the four corners of that area pretty much?
John A. Crum
Management
We have got tests pretty much in the four corners – I don't know about the four corner of it but we've tested across all of our acreage position and feel like we've got pretty consistent shale thicknesses and in fact have gas rates out a significant portion of the area. We haven't drilled horizontal wells in all those places. Joseph Allman – JP Morgan: In terms of the decline curve, could you describe what the decline curve is looking like for your most mature wells?
John A. Crum
Management
I think that's what's giving us a lot more confidence. The wells we drilled last year as we started putting more and more fracs on them we're finding that yes these decline like many shale's very quickly, but we appear to be flattening out a little quicker than what we were traditionally basing our estimations on. So to give you a sense for that, I think I've told you in the past about the 10 frac well that I guess came on production in September of last year. That well is still making 4.5 million a day after write-out a year. So that kind of makes us feel pretty good about where these numbers can flatten out to. The fracs we're doing this year, one of the wells we've got on has 12 fracs, the other two have 14 and that's going to be a number we'll probably stick to some where in that range and probably do a little experimenting with even higher numbers.
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from David Tameron –Wachovia. David Tameron –Wachovia: You guys talked a little bit about Granite Wash, can you go into more detail on the acreage position and what you've seen from the wells who have participated in, etc?
John A. Crum
Management
We have participated in another horizontal well and had reasonable results out of that. We have acreage in and around a number of these successful plays that are underway right now. The number I gave you of around 200,000 acres to give you it straight on how we've pulled that up we hold a huge acreage position in the Anadarko basin, more than 500,000 acres so it depends on where this play goes ultimately. But what we did is kind of draw a circle around the area where we've seen successful horizontal tests so far and then counted up the acreage we had within that circle. So that's where we came up with around 200,000 acres in the current active play of the Granite Wash. I think the other piece is the guys are continuing to look given our acreage position as horizontal drilling crews at some of these type plays work better and better and we continue to look at other things. And we've got a number of similar style plays that we're looking at horizontal plays in, as well, both oil and gas. David Tameron –Wachovia: I would assume most of this is HBP, but do you have the rights all the way down through like Atoka and more along on your acreage.
G. Steven Farris
Management
In most cases that's exactly the case, and so a lot of these wells we've drilled over the last five years we would have been going after Atoka or Granite Wash targets, so we've got a lot of information in the area that's why we feel quite confident about it. And as Steve point out, this is all HBP acreage. We're not in a big rush, especially given the prices, there's no reason to run out there. So we're going to try to learn a little bit from the industry as we go and then go out and make the right calls. David Tameron –Wachovia: Do you care to give us your gut on where this [breaks] in, how far, how wide?
G. Steven Farris
Management
It's a big area, I don't have a map in front of me but we're figuring we've got 250 sections in the play and we certainly don't have all the land. David Tameron –Wachovia: Let me jump to something else, can you tell me how many rigs you have running on the natural gas side in the U.S. right now? And you might have mentioned that number, I might have missed it.
G. Steven Farris
Management
Our crystal ball on what's going to happen to natural gas prices, is that the question? David Tameron –Wachovia: No, how many rigs do you have running today in the natural gas?
G. Steven Farris
Management
We've got probably eight, nine. Nine in the U.S. and a couple in Canada, John?
John A. Crum
Management
Up to four.
G. Steven Farris
Management
Four, so we've got 13 rigs running. David Tameron –Wachovia: On full year CapEx outlook, obviously depending on prices but if prices stay where they're at today, are you guys still tracking to the 3738 number and that kind of prorate the first half obviously but seeing where prices are at today, where do you think you'll come out on CapEx side?
G. Steven Farris
Management
I think we'll be in that range. I mean, number one, I don't think we've seen costs come down as much as they're going to come down. Number two, we have a very good year going and we might gear up a little bit at the end of the year to start 2010, but right now we're staying with where we are. David Tameron –Wachovia: The additional CapEx dollar right now, where would that go in your portfolio?
G. Steven Farris
Management
It would be oil anywhere around the world, frankly.
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from Tom Gardner – Simmons & Company. Thomas Gardner - Simmons & Company: Just a couple of follow-up questions on the Ootla just based on your previous comments, it sounds like you feel you've, at least from a reservoir standpoint have de-risked most of your acreage there. And can you comment on your development spacing and what that might be in the play?
John A. Crum
Management
Yes, obviously we're continuing to experiment with that to some extent and getting a couple of complete pad developments done will be a key indicator on this. Right now just if you average this out, it'd run to the five wells per what we call drilling spacing unit in Canada, which is slightly bigger than a section. And then obviously the number of fracs you put on it would kind of give you an indication of spacing if you book 14 fracs on that that kind of puts your spacing if you put it in vertical sense and more like ten acres. So that's where you get in to some pretty big numbers on this. We do feel pretty good about the acreage overall because we're seeing similar results from similar size drag jobs across the acreage. Now obviously there's still a lot of work to be done up there when you have a 2 million acre basin, but we're feeling pretty good about the resource itself, it's a matter of getting the economics right. Thomas Gardner - Simmons & Company: Can you speak to the royalty and tax situation for the Ootla there in Northeast British Columbia?
John A. Crum
Management
Yes, British Columbia has been pretty forward thinking on trying to get some of these new developments off the table and they've got a royalty structure, which granted we're still working our way through. But it really is around trying to develop the resource and then the province will take more like a net profits interest if you will. So what they do is they take a royalty or a net profits interest, whichever is greater. What we like about that is it allows you to go ahead and make some investments and then if they turn out pretty well, the province obviously gets a bigger interest. If they don't turn out well at all then we don't get penalized so tough. That's the real difference between the way they've done it and the way Alberta set their up. Thomas Gardner - Simmons & Company: Last question just jumping to M&A and the North Sea, given that the majors probably no longer consider this province in the area of growth, do you view them as perhaps strategically exiting that and is this an area that you may feel fits the Apache profile going forward for an acquisition?
G. Steven Farris
Management
Well, I think sooner or later that if you look at who has the big fields and at least the U.K. North Sea, its BP, Shell and Exxon. And do I think they'll focus on that in the long term? No I don't, although if you look at what the contribution of the North Sea still is to each one of those companies, it's pretty large. And the one thing that I would say is all North Sea fields aren't created equal. And I think we've seen that from 2005 forward and a number of people have gone out there, especially a lot of little guys have gone out there and tried to make a play out of it and it's much more high cost and much more intense from a technology standpoint. And actually even we realized back in 2003 but I think we have definitely got out some of the learning curve and it would be an area that we would focus on if the right opportunity came along.
Operator
Operator
There appear to be no further questions at this time. I would like to turn it back over to management for any additional or closing remarks.
Tom Chambers
President
Thanks everybody for joining. I just wanted to mention that Steve Farris, our CEO Chairman is going to be CNBC at 3:30 Eastern Time 2:30 Central Time, so you might want to catch him there. And for those of you with any additional questions, I'll be in my office after this call. Thanks for joining us.
Operator
Operator
That concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation.