CHEERS

Financial editor Nick Snow was in Boston to interview oil and gas industry financiers for this month's cover, when the Red Sox were (hopelessly, again!) trying to extend their 1999 season with a trip to the World Series. We received a note-a yarn, really-upon his return, that euphemized (eulogized would be appropriate here, too) everything Red Sox. "Reverse the Curse" signs. The fabled Green Monster in left field. Fenway Park. The sliced-bread-wrapped Fenway hotdog. Yawkey Way. Being a veteran journalist, Snow put wishful thinking aside, when asking tough questions of expert Boston-based money managers, about their sentiment toward the oil and gas industry. To score dollars with these money havens, E&P and service-sector executives need to be batting like McGwire and pitching no-hitters. "Boston is a broad-based money management center where companies manage funds in the trillions of dollars. There are a lot of serious players there who are knowledgeable investors," says Robert J. Dye, Apache vice president for investor relations. Read about it in Snow's "The Boston Buyside." And, when visiting Bean Town, bring an excellent credit rating. To help develop one, senior financial editor Brian A. Toal explains how Moody's Investor Service views oil and oil-service companies' financials, when assigning their famous triple-A and infamous C3 grades to bonds and other debt. Why does Moody's like Apache Corp. so much? Read "How Moody's Rates." Next, associate editor Paula Dittrick and exploration editor Peggy Williams tell us about four oil-weighted independents-Denbury Resources, Nuevo Energy, Plains Resources and Berry Petroleum-and their travails during the oil-price downturn. "We got what we call the triple whammy," Douglas L. Foshee, Nuevo chairman, president and chief executive officer, tells Dittrick in "Down, but Not Knocked Out." "First [West Texas Intermediate] went down, then what we receive for our oil as a percentage of WTI dropped. Plus, we use steam generated by natural gas to assist us in getting a lot of our crude out of the ground, and gas prices went up. So, production costs went up. It all made for a pretty tough year." In "Enhancing Elk Hills," Williams explains what Occidental Petroleum's intentions are in the field in California's San Joaquin Basin. Oxy bought Elk Hills from the government for nearly $4 billion in 1998 and added 307 million barrels of oil and 708 billion cubic feet of gas to its reserves, in so doing. "But, to achieve its vision of creating a premier energy hub, Oxy faced a tremendous task," Williams writes. The editor also explores the much-touted seismic-viewing technique of visualization, in "Immersed in Data." Today, about 60 large-scale visualization centers exist for the oil industry, scattered throughout the world, she reports. This virtual oil-finding is hoped to turn up more of the real stuff. Odds may be better of that than a Red Sox World Series win. -Nissa Darbonne, Managing Editor