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COPYRIGHT 2005 Hart Publications, Inc.
Oil and Gas Investor: Describe briefly the strategy that drives your company forward.
Plank: We're really here to grow and do it profitably, and that's easier said than done. It's sometimes easy to grow, and it's sometimes easy to be profitable, but it's not easy all the time to do both. So far, we've grown profitably over a period of 50 years, and in the last decade or so, we've done it though a combination of both acquisitions and drilling. They kind of go hand in hand. Over the last 10 years, in fact, we've invested $18.3 billion in our business of which 47% was acquisitions and 53% was exploration and development drilling. What we've found is that to be good at either, you've got to show a way to add value. And the way that we really add value is through operations.
OGI: Could you describe briefly your core drilling and production areas?
Plank: The other element of the strategy is not to get bound to any one given basin. When we were in Denver 15 years ago, we had a little bit of a Rocky Mountain presence, but primarily we were an Anadarko-Basin producer. Today, we have a portfolio of core areas where we've got lots of running room in Canada, the North Sea, Egypt and Australia, all in addition to two core areas we've got in the U.S. So as we've been building the company, we've tried to add areas. If you acquire, you get bigger and get more production. But if you aren't thinking about how you're going to gain greater opportunities through the drillbit, then you've just got a bigger depletion problem.
OGI: Your company announced expansion of the relationship with ExxonMobil in Canada. Is that an example of trying to diversify outside of the U.S.?
Plank: You could look at it that way. The way we look at it is we like to grow all of our regions as...
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