Analysts were saluting the prospects for the emerging liquids-rich Niobrara play of the Rocky Mountains on Tuesday after Anadarko Petroleum projected a potential oil-equivalent resource target of 500 million to 1.5 billion barrels there and rival Noble Energy updated its growth expectations.
Anadarko's update came Monday while Noble included its Niobrara update Tuesday morning during the company's four-hour 2011 analyst conference.
Describing Anadarko as the "king of the Rockies," analysts at Houston's Tudor Pickering Holt said in a Tuesday report that the company's Wattenberg Niobrara update "exceeds our higher-than-street expectations."
At the same time, RBC Capital Markets analyst Scott Hanold distributed a report on Anadarko's release of results from 11 horizontal wells in the Colorado play, noting: "These rates are very strong and some of the best we have seen for horizontal wells in the highly variable Niobrara Shale."
With the liquids content at 73% from its results, Anadarko announced plans to boost its Wattenberg horizontal program to seven rigs by the end of next year with plans to drill 160 horizontal wells in its 350,000-acre position, up from 40 this year (See story, 1635 GMT).
Anadarko said it ranks as the largest net producer in the nearby liquids-rich Denver-Julesberg Basin with more than 70,000 boe/d.
For Noble, the update on its Niobrara position came as one piece of a growth outlook that spans the globe with five core areas that also include the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, offshore Israel and West Africa and the natural gas play onshore in Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale.
In the Niobrara, Noble said its 58 horizontal wells are producing 14,000 boe/d with expectations for an increase to 70,000 boe/d during the next five years (See story, 1322 GMT).
Elaborating on Noble's operations in the Niobrara and the DJ Basin, the company's senior vice president for the US northern region, Ted Brown, told analysts he expects the liquids portion of production there will grow to 66% from the 54% level today.
Brown estimated Noble's net risked resource potential in the DJ at 1.3 billion boe, predicting: "The play holds tremendous upside and will drive growth for us in many years to come."
He said the Niobrara horizontal drilling program so far has proved "it is working and is repeatable."
To help fund increased spending in its core areas, Noble plans a divestment program for next year estimated at $1 billion to $1.5 billion in proceeds by one analyst at the conference monitored by web cast.
Although Noble CEO Chuck Davidson declined to confirm that estimate during the meeting, he did compliment the analyst on his "metrics" and said he plans to have the sale completed by the end of next year.
The sale will include US onshore assets representing less than 10% of Noble's global portfolio with 23,000 boe/d of production and 88 million boe of net proved reserves, 70% of those in natural gas.
