There is an interesting write up in Fuel Fix about how Apache found their big discovery well in Reeves County. It seems that all of the Delaware Basin know-it-alls weren't so smart after all, including the vaunted Chevron MCBU team. I guess the map of DB will have to be redrawn to include this new field.
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Chevron's management is not accountable for failure or RCA. They are the friends and family lifers.
MCBU knew for over a year as Apache approached MCBU for leasing our acreage and permitting seismic. MCBU can't get funds to lease in core Permian; so why would we lease fringe gas play when we already had 180k acres in the "Alpine High". Apache won't be able to make this play economic.
Worked MCBU for 3 years. Not a great deal of team work and support. More about trying to make others look bad and denigrate them to make themselves look good. The DB PM at the time was very much like that - she always wanted to push blame and victimize those trying to help her. Perpetual changes from Houston didn't help either.
Being assigned to based business was a better gig. Certain fields had some good people to work with.
Chevron has more acreage in MidCon than it has money to drill and develop already. Got a very late start on the horizontal fracking (slow adopter) but finally getting the hang of it. Should do fine.
All that is true, OP. That happened as Apache meticulously amassed all that contiguous acreage right under Chevron's nose. Who here at Chevron is minding the store?