Thread regarding Apache Corp. layoffs

Geologist that make up type curve to get drills approved and then don’t meet their forecast. No accountability on poor production and reserve estimates by the technical teams.

Too many things to list where it all went wrong, but I do know this, RP is rolling over in his grave. It’s so sad what has happened to this company.

When the Plank era ended And alpine high. Come on. Really?!!!???!!

Is that the 3 yr or 5 yr plan? lol. Can’t predict day to day.

“But according to my spreadsheet/planning we should be making money” LOL

BOD needs to hire one of the CEOs of those successful unconventional companies that got acquired, Pioneer for example. a CEO that knows how to make money. Current and past APA CEOs sold everything (GOM, Canada, Australia, 30% of Egypt, Woodford, Argentina, Legacy, etc) and nobody knows where the billions went.

I worked for APA in the "glory days" (mid '90s-late '00s). As was often heard around the office back then: worst job I've ever had, and best job I've ever had. We ran lean, and it always seemed that there was pressure to do more than there was time or staff to do it. The "sense of urgency" (endlessly touted at the top) was real. But that also meant opportunity/responsibility given and performance recognized. The experiences of those years eclipsed, in many ways, what came before and after in my career. And it was absolutely the right place at the right time from a financial perspective. Tremendous growth and corporate performance was reflected in the various (and unparalleled) stock incentive programs. That gave me the freedom to walk away, earlier than I would have otherwise, when it became clear that new leadership over my function meant significant change - and not for the better. Unfortunately, that seems to have been a sign of things to come for much of the organization. What a shame.

Way too much management now with having sold so much of the company. Also. Fire the ELTs . Problems solved

The company used to work without functional leads, aka overpaid Directors. Organizational Structure suggested by consultants, that truly din’t add any value, had no impact in stock price. They can do all the re-structuring they want, re-organize assets, use trendy terms, etc etc but that won’t fix the bad decisions made at the very top that had been the main cause on stock price devaluation. They don’t know what they are doing, they are always reacting, trying to fix the last bad decisions made.

I agree, it is fine to let the planners do their jobs, what isn’t fine is that they don’t leave their silo to get any technical input.
What is the plan to grow? Overpay for the worst opportunities on the market?
None of the leadership has any idea what a viable opportunity looks like. JC just wants to roll the dice, SR doesn’t want to spend to grow. MM is an empire builder fattening up the back office, TH doesn’t have an opinion or independent though. Together they are the dream team!??!!!??

My fav was the approval meetings where billions were green lighted using Barnhart as the standard. Probably could have used some of those meetings to inspire real scene for the Landman series, would fit seamlessly.

What should we do JC? F’It Frac it!

Lots of bad decisions as stated above plus a big factor was the shale revolution. Apache didn’t have quality acreage as most of their acquisitions focused on current production prior to shale development. JC drilled like the acreage was top tier. Deadwood was properly named and poor results didn’t faze him. He touted Alpine wells as successes even though they were p&a’d after less than a month online.

It went wrong when the senior execs disregarded data showing Alpine High wasn’t what they thought it was, kept going when it was proven to be a bad investment, and the CEO down were still able to remain employed.

I left several years ago, and the final straw for me was the whole Project Ascend town halls being led by the very people who got the company into the mess. Their messaging was that “we’re going to get through this” as if we all were to blame. No, I showed up daily and did my job competently.

The formation of the natural gas company was another stupid decision.

I remember several chief executives getting fired because they disagreed with the company’s predictions, but were proven right.

Things started to go wrong when the previous CEO abandoned the acquire and exploit strategy of RP and fancied himself as a mega-E&P deal maker.

Then he doubled down on drilling at all costs, without regard to the costs.

And then he made some spectacularly bad purchases, from stuff in Oklahoma to elsewhere (including the entire San Antonio office and all that it entailed too).

Then he got ousted and in came the current guy, who never had a real plan from the beginning other than to cut and divest, and he couldn’t accept being told that his ideas weren’t good ones. And he went all in on that big gas play that he was just convinced had huge oil reserves and just about bankrupted the company in the process.

I could go on, but it really all comes down to these things:

1. Drifting away from what the company was historically good at and going into areas and business models it didn’t have the necessary talent or expertise to fully succeed at;

2. Failing to listen to engineers who said particular areas weren’t worth buying (and certainly not at the prices paid for them);

3. Getting into too much debt—primarily as a consequence of the previous two problems; and

4. Continually selling off assets to service such debt without any realistic way to replace the revenue generated by such assets, thereby creating a continuing downward spiral.

Plus the planning VP was demoted but retained. That makes absolutely no sense

Planning needs to be 50% smaller. Its yuuge for a company this size.

Can you count how many planning directors and managers y’all have.