Anadarko Petroleum Corp. is coming to the end of its divestiture program to reduce debt from its purchases of Oklahoma City-based Kerr-McGee and Denver-based Western Gas Resources. "When we began looking at acquisitions, we were looking at the corporate market rather than the asset market for our potential expansion opportunities because we saw a difference in valuation metrics between the equity and the asset markets," Katie Jackson, vice president, corporate acquisitions and divestures, said at the sixth annual A&D Strategies and Opportunities conference in Dallas recently, presented by Oil and Gas Investor and A&D Watch. Last year, Anadarko acquired Kerr-McGee for $16.4 billion and Western Gas for $4.7 billion in cash. "By the time we went to the Anadarko board for final approval to make offers to Kerr-McGee and Western Gas, we already had a list of potential legacy Anadarko divestment candidates. That allowed us to announce that we were divesting our Canadian operations shortly after we announced those two acquisitions," Jackson said. For more on this, see the October issue of Oil and Gas Investor. For a subscription, call 713-260-6441.

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