Dave Stover's House of Cards:
The truth is that Noble's domestic onshore assets are terrible....
Marcellus is going nowhere and wasn't even sustainable at $100 oil.
DJ is drilling currently drilling their best wells while getting the worst prices. Only a matter of time until those marginally economic wells are done and the play has to shut down....which will include the Denver office. The DJ only gets it's share of capital for the moment because it would cripple the company to admit its defeat in US onshore.
The best Eagle Ford assets are already drilled and what's left is marginal at current prices. The "improvements" since acquiring the assets from Rosetta are nothing but a smokeshow. First they increased the spacing and made better wells (but had to reduce the inventory). Now they reduce the spacing back to previous levels albeit at lower production but, what a surprise, they increased the inventory. It's unbelievable to think that nobody would catch on to this.
And in the Delaware, Rosetta couldn't figure it out and Noble isn't any better. Why purchase these assets just to sit around and extend leases forever. It's nothing but a money pit if you can't figure out how to operate in the Permian. Everything that Noble does in the Permian lags about a year behind prudent operators like Concho.
So that leaves us with offshore....
The most recent GOM projects are just coming online at $40 oil. Unfortunate timing from when the "economic" discoveries were made at $100 oil. And there's nothing major brewing for the next few years, so no reason to expect additional production to come on when/if prices do recover.
Africa is gassy and desperate. The best areas are already online and Noble is planning to exit much of the rest. Any significant future production is a long shot.
Falkland Islands is done. They should take it off the map.
So now we're left with Noble's Crown Jewel.....Leviathan in the Eastern Med. Oh wait...agreements with Israel are tied up in court and doesn't like anyone should expect a resolution anytime soon. I'm mostly surprised that the recent announcement only dropped the stock by 10%....should have been more like 50%.
Enjoy your money Stover and your other incompetent board and executive cronies. It's only a matter of time before it all comes crashing down. I'm mostly sad for the employees who have to put up with this ineptitude while they await the next layoff.