Something has been kicking Apache stock into high gear the last two days. I doubt if it was the anticipation of the Sanford Bernstein conference nor the hiring of Goldman Sachs to shop some assets. There could be something else in the wind. The cryptic remark by Steve Ferris, CEO of Apache, ramped up my curiosity. I think something is going on in Egypt. Perhaps a joint venture with the Chinese to validate the value of those oil assets.
5-29-13 some time during the trading day this remark was made in response to a question about the Egyptian assets that are troubling investors. APA gets as much as 25% of their cash flow from Egypt according to some reports I have read.
G. Steven Farris – Chairman and CEO
Yeah, the one thing I try to explain to folks is and I don’t mean it’s bad, but if you thought about it we thought about it. I really don’t want to – it would be nice to be able to validate the value of Egypt and that’s all I can really say about that.
When the CEO makes an offhand remark like that, that’s all he can say about it after spending a few minutes talking about how he has been to Egypt twice in the last six months. Something is up.