Liam Denning, Columnist

Apache's Big Discovery Isn't Even OPEC's Biggest Problem

Even a $10 bump in oil prices could enable a lot more drilling.

September 7, 2016 at 5:36 PM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

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Apache did something old-fashioned on Wednesday that oil investors love: It said it had found more oil -- a lot more: 3 billion barrels. It has apparently also stumbled upon 75 trillion cubic feet of gas.

The stock duly jumped, though investors shouldn't take those numbers at face value. Initial estimates of a field's potential usually err on the side of crazily optimistic. Rival Hess enjoyed a fillip in late June when it announced a big discovery off the coast of Guyana. On Tuesday, its stock slipped by 3.5 percent after it announced "disappointing" results from an exploration well there.