Higher production would offset rising costs

Article Excerpt

APACHE CORP. $124 (New York symbol APA; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Resources sector; Shares outstanding: 383.4 million; Market cap: $47.5 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 3.5; Dividend yield: 0.5%; TSINetwork Rating: Average; www.apachecorp.com) plans to spend $8.1 billion to develop its oil and natural-gas projects in 2011, up 8.3% from its earlier estimate of $7.5 billion. The increase is partly due to higher costs for equipment and workers at its shale-gas operations in Texas, Oklahoma, Alberta and British Columbia. The company now plans to apply the same horizontal-drilling techniques it uses at its North American shale-gas projects to new finds in Egypt and Argentina. If Apache’s drilling is successful, these new properties could substantially increase its production. Apache is a buy. buy…