How a decade of underinvestment is reshaping the global hunt for oil

**Let's Talk Energy — Episode 43** How a decade of underinvestment is reshaping the global hunt for oil, with APA Corporation's Tracey Henderson Wednesday, 24 June 2026 SPEAKERS **NB** Noah Brenner — Host, Let's Talk Energy **TH** Tracey Henderson — Executive Vice President for Exploration, APA Corporation [00:00] NB [INTRO] This is Let’s Talk Energy, your go-to podcast for smart energy insights. I’m Noah Brenner. Exploration always seems like the most exciting part of the oil and gas industry, conjuring images of wildcatters in exotic locales, striking gushers worth billions of dollars. But starting in the 20-teens, many companies began not only cutting back their exploration budgets, but also letting go or reassigning the people doing the actual work. The shift was driven by efficiency gains from technology and the rise of vast U.S. shale fields, but also uncertainty over how quickly the world may transition away from oil and demands from investors that companies consistently turn a profit. NB Now, however, with oil demand looking more resilient, shale fields showing their limits, and investors asking companies whether they’re actually finding enough barrels to maintain their cash returns, exploration is back in vogue. NB But rebuilding an exploration portfolio doesn’t happen overnight, and the industry as a whole is finding less oil and making fewer large discoveries than it used to each year. NB To help us make sense of the changing trends in oil and gas exploration, I’m joined today by Tracey Henderson, Executive Vice President for Exploration at APA Corporation, which many of you may know as Apache. And full disclosure, APA is a Rystad Energy client. We’re going to talk about how exploration has evolved over her career and what defines a successful wildcat today. She’ll walk us through how APA, which kept exploring when others did not, is looking at its prospects in places as diverse as Suriname, Uruguay, Egypt, and the Permian Basin. And finally, we’ll tackle the thorny question of whether new technology and new ideas can help the industry break out of its discovery drought. NB Tracey, welcome to the program. TH Hi, Noah. Happy to be here. NB Well, let’s talk energy. I want to start with a bit about your own exploration journey. Why is it that you became an exploration geophysicist? And what is it about finding new oil and gas that gets you up in the morning? TH I was, I would say, fortunate to have started with what is known today as a big exploration company. And they were solely focused on international exploration — finding new resources. And that was my start in my career. During that particular first job, I was involved in a play-opening well in West Africa in Equatorial Guinea called the Ceiba Discovery, which was the Ceiba Field. And then there was significant success beyond that. But it was really a play opener where along that part of the margin in West Africa, most companies had focused on the Tertiary. And this was a test of the Cretaceous. And it was the first successful Cretaceous well along that margin. I think it was one of those catalysts very early in my career that really set things up — this was a pretty amazing thing that had happened. And even at that point in my career, I knew that it was a really big deal. And it subsequently led to a lot of other discoveries along that margin, because it basically proved that that play was going to work. And that’s, to me, that’s sort of the story of exploration through time — finding new ideas, testing new ideas, and then seeing where you can export those to other places. TH And I would say it’s the same for me today. What I learned in that first job was that exploration is really like putting together a big geoscience puzzle, where you’re looking for places that have a source rock, that have reservoir rock buried to the right depth and the source rock buried to the right depth, and that you’ve had the right processes take place that you can actually trap it. My career has been learning, in certain places, what works, trying to export that to other places. But it’s still about finding where all the puzzle pieces are, and then how can we continue to build on that and open up new plays and new ideas, even in our existing positions in Egypt and Alaska and Suriname and Uruguay. NB It’s got to be a rush to have something move from theory and an idea through to actual success on the ground, I would think. [04:00] TH There’s nothing like it, actually. I still love finally putting all those puzzle pieces together and going out and testing it. Still the one thing I would say that gets me up every day is being able to go out and test concepts and test ideas and then see where we can go from there. NB How has exploration and the value that companies put on exploration activity changed over the course of your career? TH Exploration in the industry has really gone through a lot of cycles throughout my career, often driven by different things. But it’s been really interesting. I would say the fundamentals always prevail, and this industry has always been known as a cyclic one. So I’ve seen a lot of really ups and downs. In the ups, exploration is a top priority in the company — it’s growth initiatives, we’ve got to build resource. And then when things are down, it is the first thing to get cut because it’s discretionary spend. And so then you see underinvestment in exploration and you end up having to try to play catch-up. TH There’s been a couple of things that have happened really in the last 15 years that fundamentally changed that a little bit. One is the shale revolution. That was something that shifted the industry and people’s focus to what were short-cycle opportunities. So that created a disruption in the conventional exploration space, really starting in the big boom, 2008, 2012, and then it sort of grew from there. And then we went through the COVID experience. But even before COVID, there was another disruptor — basically a bigger shift to renewables. There were a lot of companies saying we see no value in oil and gas beyond 2030. Then COVID happened, which was a big disruptor globally. TH And now I think we’re in a space where a lot of the ideas around how renewables were going to replace fossil fuels are really being tested. And now we’re in 2026 — we’re four years from 2030. And the IEA has revised their views, basically saying they see demand to 2050 now for both oil and gas. And we’re talking about having a gap on how we’re going to meet demand, given the declines that we’re going to have to try to offset and provide for additional growth, which is what they’re predicting now. So everybody now is trying to react to that. NB Are the standards of success different today? When it comes to what is a successful wildcat, what works when it comes to a discovery? Has that changed as well, over the course of your career? TH It has. Really it’s about, part of it varies with what are you trying to basically achieve. If you’re a supermajor, you’re really looking for things that are very, very large scale. But I think the idea of success has changed a bit because one of the things I think that we have seen introduced within the conversation is discipline and value. Where the story used to be about growth for growth’s sake and just delivering production, I think now everybody is schooled on the fact that not all barrels are created equal and they have different values. So there’s a much bigger focus on capital discipline and the value of those barrels that we’re actually searching for. And I think that’s been the fundamental shift. The other thing that’s aligned in this is you want to be able to deliver a portfolio that basically covers from what we need today to what we’re going to need in 10 years from now. [08:00] TH And so you’re looking at having a core that you can support through time that will basically create a base that you can effectively grow on and offset declines, that will give you optionality for growth through time. So you’ve got projects in a pipeline that give you value delivery today, things in the appraisal stage, things that are near to midterm, and then ultimately still working on what are those big opportunities that we’re looking for that will be value-accretive in the future. NB If I’m understanding you correctly, it’s not just a bunch of frontier acreage or a bunch of long shots out there — it’s a bit more measured, a bit more calculated than that. TH Yeah. And you really want to balance a portfolio with respect to timing, risk, and opportunity. If you can get a balanced portfolio that delivers those three things, that’s my idea of what an ideal portfolio is today. NB The world is becoming more competitive, more contentious, unfortunately. And how do you think about geopolitical risk when you’re constructing your portfolio? Certainly a factor that’s becoming more and more perhaps problematic. TH It’s a big factor, actually. And I would say country selection really matters — more so today than it has previously. When we moved to sort of the renewable space, we had a lot of countries that moved in that direction as well. And so that’s introduced a nuance from a geopolitical risk standpoint where you’ve got an element of: we are shifting to green energy and renewables, and that pressure comes at the country level as well. So we look for places that want to develop their resources, number one, but also have the fiscal regimes, the stability in contracts, and what can provide a long-term partnership to develop those resources over time. Egypt’s a great example — we’ve been in Egypt over 30 years, very strong partnership there. And that’s what we’re really going to look for in other countries that we look at entering: where can we go develop a strong partnership with governments and actually put together a material position that really matters, that can help drive long-term value for Apache. NB Do you also have to consider, with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz that we saw over the past three months — do you have to think about exit routes or choke points as well? To be straightforward here, would you pick up acreage where the oil needed to travel through the Strait? TH When you think about disruptors like that that occur — like in the Strait of Hormuz — I think you’ve got to look at exploration as a long game. A lot of the things that we’re investing in today are going to pay out over the next 10 to 20 years. How much of a disruptor do you think that’s going to be through time? And I would say you shouldn’t base a decision on whether to enter an area on a disruptor today. Personally, I think the Strait of Hormuz is too much of a major artery globally — that will get resolved. So it wouldn’t be that much of a factor in determining whether you go and look at doing something in the Gulf there. NB Let’s talk about APA’s portfolio. You’ve continued to be an active explorer over the past decade. Even as you point out, a lot of companies pulled back — they lowered their budgets, they cut their staff or reassigned them. Why was exploration so important to the DNA of APA? And do you think having preserved that capability gives you a bit of a head start now, as we’re kind of in that upcycle again? TH It’s been a huge differentiator for Apache. [12:00] TH And it was really based in a belief, even as we talked about what was happening in 2018 and 2019, that the demand for oil and gas was going to be there much longer than the majority of people were responding to or believing at that time. And so it was taking a position early on that the demand was going to be there. We’re an oil and gas company and we’re going to be an oil and gas company, and staying completely committed to that. TH And that allowed us to do multiple things. It was build a portfolio, as you said, when much of the other industry was pulling back, and retaining the capability to do that. And the portfolio build has been the, I would say, huge differentiator. It allowed us to basically explore and now move towards a development in Suriname, which is going to be a really significant milestone for Apache and deliver a significant amount of value. It also allowed us to build on a portfolio, bring Alaska into the portfolio, bring Uruguay into the portfolio, when much of the industry was not active. And the fact that we have retained the talent to do that, I think gives us a significant leg up on a lot of the competitors, and a breadth in doing that as well. So we actually can support our portfolio on conventionals, unconventionals, onshore, offshore, and we’re able to do that from the geoscience standpoint, the reservoir engineering, the technical and the commercial standpoint, which for a company our size gives us a lot of breadth to evaluate not only our own portfolio, but other opportunities. NB You ran through the gamut there — onshore, offshore, conventional, unconventional. Let’s talk about some of those specific positions. I’d like to start with Alaska. It’s a place that had been quiet for a little bit, particularly through that early 2020s period, and now is a really hot area. You just acquired some additional acreage, legacy development up there as well to complement your existing position. What’s next in Alaska? And how big is the opportunity there that you see, potentially? TH We see a significant opportunity in Alaska. We entered, as you know, a couple of years ago. We’ve had two discoveries, one of which we’re going to be appraising — the Sockeye 2 discovery — this winter, and looking at drilling another exploration well this winter as well. It’s one of those interesting places in the world that has suddenly gotten hot again. And why is that? Exploration is really about a story of learning lessons and then exporting those to other places. The first discovery I was ever part of in West Africa — the Ceiba Field — opened up the Cretaceous play in West Africa. And from there, working for another company, we leveraged that information and had the Jubilee discovery in West Africa, same play. TH If you shift over to Alaska and think about what’s happening there right now, you had the Pika discovery in 2013, and that was a play-opening well. And so immediately you’ve got a catalyst — no one had explored for this play, where else might it work? And what we’re doing now is basically exporting that play to the other side of Prudhoe Bay. You’re starting to see a lot of other people acknowledge that, especially now on the heels of our Sockeye discovery, because we’ve effectively opened that play up on the other side of Prudhoe Bay. You have other operators coming in and saying, where else might that Brookian play work? And so the most successful lease sale they’ve ever had was the last lease sale, and part of that is really driven by the fact that you’ve got a new play that’s been opened up and operators coming in to see where they can explore for that in Alaska. TH We’re really setting ourselves up for success there. We see a significant portfolio just within our own block. You’ll have seen the news release we did recently on our purchase of Badami — Savant, Alaska — which is also going to allow us a lot of flexibility to do several things. [16:00] TH It will give us optionality for future appraisal and future development, and it will help support our drilling activities on the slope coming up as early as this season. NB What do you need to see in that exploration well? Is it going to help prove up the extent of the play? The flow rates, ultimately how the reservoir performs? What questions could it answer for you? TH It’ll be twofold, really. On the appraisal side at Sockeye, we will be looking at things like connectivity and reservoir quality, which was one of the nicest surprises of the Sockeye 2 well — we saw really good quality reservoir, better than what some of the existing discoveries are on the slope already, which was really encouraging. Oil quality was very good. So all of the play elements of that puzzle that I talked about are there. TH And the interesting thing about Alaska is that once you’ve proven all of what we call the play elements — you know you have reservoir, you know you have source rock, you know that it’s migrating — then you’re really just looking for trapping elements, which is what we’re basically down to in Alaska right now. What does the container look like in the discovery that we had? How far can we push the reservoir quality and the distances in terms of defining the size of the container? Thicknesses of reservoir, which will ultimately help inform the rest of the appraisal and development program going forward. On the exploration side, it’s really just about testing the prospectivity that we’ve got on the block. We’ve got a really diverse set of prospects. We’ve explored the Brookian, or what’s known as the top set play, thus far. There are others. So I see that we’re going to have a long runway on what we’re going to test in Alaska that I’m very excited about. NB A ready opportunity to fill some of that excess capacity that’s in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline as well. TH Exactly. Yeah. And that’s the other thing that the acquisition of the Badami field will help with as well. NB I want to go to literally the other side of the world in a completely different environment and talk about Suriname. You’re progressing the GranMorgu development, 220,000 barrels per day, I believe, if I’ve got the sizing right there. TH You do, yeah. NB But I mean, I guess that’s a development. What is exciting about Suriname from an exploration perspective? And how are you balancing the opportunity to make discoveries that are tiebackable or within reach of GranMorgu versus maybe stepping out and trying to test something big and new? TH GranMorgu, as we talked about, is going to be a significant achievement. It’s something we’re really excited about, but it is only part of the story, to your question. We still see a lot of exploration opportunity in Suriname, and we’re aligned with our partner, TotalEnergies, in that. And we’re actually planning some additional exploration activities starting in 2027, in addition to getting the development going on GranMorgu and getting to first oil in 2028. We’re going to be drilling three to four wells, probably, in the 2027 to 2028 timeframe. And those can really do two things — they can either extend the value of the GranMorgu field, extending the plateau, or they could provide additional growth opportunities in the future, depending on what we find within those exploration wells. But that’s another place, again, that we’ve got a very scalable resource that’s going to give us a good long runway. NB Are you thinking multiple play concepts to test there, or an expansion of the existing play? TH There are different play concepts in Suriname. I would say we have a very full plate even with what I’m going to call the proven play that a lot of people refer to as the golden lane, which extends basically from Suriname into Guyana. We see significant prospectivity just within that play still. But there is additional prospectivity that is deeper, to the south of us, that we will get to exploring at some point. We’ve got a lot of high-graded prospectivity in the proven play that we’re going to focus on in the near term. NB And as you said, that focus on value and making sure that exploration is finding valuable barrels, not just barrels. TH Exactly. Yes. NB You mentioned going to the south. [20:00] NB I want to go a little further to the south. You’ve got a frontier position in Uruguay. It’s a really interesting place. This is not the first time that industry has been exploring Uruguay, but it hasn’t necessarily panned out in the past. What’s different this time? Are you going in with new information, a different understanding? What makes you optimistic that this time is the time for Uruguay? TH I’m going to start from the African side, actually, because there’s been a few things that have happened globally that make Uruguay interesting today. If you’ve got a play that you know has worked somewhere, where can you export that to and actually start to execute on it in a different place? Namibia was the one thing that really was a mover in recent times — as you worked your way south on the West African coast, the long prevailing view was that we didn’t know if we had the same source rocks to the south. They weren’t proven. People postulated that they should be there, but none of the drilling over the last decades really opened that play up. And there were two wells that were drilled in pretty quick succession — Venus by Total and the Graff well by Shell in the Orange Basin in Namibia — both of which proved we had a working source rock further south on the West African margin. And that was a big puzzle piece. TH We play conjugate margin exploration, have done that for decades. The coast of Brazil basically links up with the coast of West Africa — source rocks that exist on one side exist on the other. But that conjugate margin concept had not been proven as far south as Namibia in the Orange Basin. And now that we have a source rock proven test on the West African side, the conjugate margin of that should be Uruguay. And it was something that I had recognized even in a previous life — knew that if that ever worked, you’re going to try to push that concept further south. And we had the ability, being still committed to exploration, to basically move on it and be an early mover. So we participated in one of the first bid rounds and were able really to look at the entire margin, which was unlicensed at the time, and license up the blocks that we liked through a couple of bid rounds. And since then, the entire offshore is now licensed up. Chevron’s entered, Shell has entered with us in one block, and you’re seeing a lot of supermajors as well doing the same thing. TH The other question is that Uruguay was explored for in the deep water previously. And there was one well that was drilled called the Raya well. That was interesting — it tested a different concept, a very shallow concept. And so it never really tested deep enough to test the same play that you saw at Graff and Venus, or to test the source rock. In fact, there was a very long distance between source rock and those shallow reservoirs. So in our view, it didn’t test the play. We really needed to go in and look at what is the analog for Venus, what was the age of those reservoirs, where do they sit on the Uruguay side — that’s the place we need to go test. And that’s what we’re going to do. NB So essentially, you’ve got a proven concept and a completely untested area to play with. I want to shift to an entirely other end of the spectrum, which is Egypt. It’s one of the longtime anchors of APA’s portfolio — generally more of a producing area. How are you looking at Egypt from an exploration perspective? TH We’re actually really active on the exploration perspective in Egypt today. As you said, it’s a very mature basin, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s not additional prospectivity or new ideas that you can generate. We’ve been in Egypt 30 years, great relationships, a core area for us, so it’s very important to us in our portfolio. [24:00] TH And in 2024, we changed the framework on the gas terms, which really made gas exploration in Egypt much more attractive. And we’ve had a big focus now to look at areas in Egypt that we typically avoided because the gas risk was too high, or we thought the reservoirs were too deep. There’s a lot of common-knowledge dogma that, once challenged, often doesn’t hold up. If I go back to that first well in West Africa — nobody drilled the Cretaceous because the belief was it’s too deep, reservoir quality is not going to be good. And you kind of run into those dogmas around the world that once challenged often don’t hold up. TH So we are drilling deeper. We’re finding reservoir quality that yes, can be produced. We’re drilling into different areas that we know were gas-prone, that have very deep source rocks. But we’re exploring for gas now — which is not something we had been doing up until 2024. So we’re seeing a lot of running room that has opened that opportunity set up in exploring for gas. We’ve got some big wells that are going to go down starting in late this year, early next year. They’re going to be big tests for gas in areas that we typically hadn’t explored for, because we weren’t exploring for gas at the time. NB It’s a great example of those financial terms that you brought up when you were talking about geopolitical risk. And Egypt is a gas-short country and could certainly use those additional molecules. TH Of course, it was a catalyst for both. It’s good for both sides. NB Let’s talk about another quite actively drilled basin and a big producing area, and that’s the Permian. It’s probably the most drilled basin in the world, perhaps. Are there still things to find in the Permian? And how are you thinking about exploration there, perhaps from an unconventional standpoint? TH Whether it’s conventional or unconventional, people tend to talk about the Permian and resource basins like it’s not a geologic basin, and it is. So we approach it very much the same way. It doesn’t just stop because you’ve had thousands of wells. Exploration doesn’t stop. It doesn’t stop at the coastline either. You continue to push things even in basins where you’re heavily explored. Egypt’s a good example as well — there’s thousands of wells in Egypt, it’s a very mature area, and we’re finding new things to do. TH I think the interesting thing with the Permian is it’s a very similar story — we still have opportunities, and those opportunities really come in two places. One is going to be better seismic imaging, better technology, and new ideas. The technology can come either on the imaging side or the drilling side, driving efficiencies that open up additional plays that may not have been economic to do 10 years ago, but we’ve got technology today that can make them work. And so between technology on the imaging side and the geoscience side, that opens things up that lets us continue to explore. And we’re doing that even in places today like the Barnett, where we’re finding that operational efficiencies and new technology are helping us really start to deliver on those plays. NB You mentioned the idea of gas risk in Egypt. The Permian is certainly a basin that’s well supplied with gas. But there are also a lot of forecasts showing U.S. natural gas prices rising as we export more LNG. Is there gas risk in the Permian Basin, and how do you think about finding gas there? TH I think about it in terms of timing. Because if you look back at what’s happened in gas prices just in the last five to seven years, you do see a lot of fluctuation. But I think the long-term outlook for gas is good. And the fact that gas is now a global market with LNG allows us to do a lot more with gas. So it’s really about finding the right resource in the right place and having access to LNG or access to advantaged domestic markets. [28:00] TH I think the view on gas in general has shifted a lot, really, within the last 10 to 15 years. You’ve got to have a long-term view on it. The good thing about gas, particularly on the domestic side, is that you can basically shut in gas when you want to and then produce when you want to — so you’ve got some flexibility around it. But the interesting thing is that if you talk to the general consensus, including the IEA today, gas has a longer horizon for demand than oil does. So the value through time I think is not going to be of a concern. You’ve just got to have a long-term view on it. NB I want to loop back. You mentioned the impact of technology in the Permian Basin, and it dovetails nicely. The industry is obviously leveraging advances in computing and AI. Sometimes I find the way the industry talks about it is a little bit vague — you’re not actually sure where these advances are, how exactly companies are using it, where exactly the gains are coming from. I want to talk to somebody who’s using it every single day. Where do you see the biggest technology impact on exploration, and where do you see those greatest gains? TH I’ll give you some good examples. In the Permian, I’ll start with that one. The place where I’ve seen some of the biggest advancement on the exploration side — and this goes not just from the Permian but industry-wide — is on the seismic processing side. Because one of the things that was really a limiting factor: when you talk about seismic data, you’re talking about massive volumes of data. And it will take months sometimes to process the data that’s acquired in the field. So it’s almost like the ability to acquire huge amounts of data wasn’t the limiting factor — the ability to process it and have software that could actually drive it is something that’s really evolved over the last decade, decade and a half. With the computing power that we can leverage, the algorithms, and using AI as well to help on the imaging side, you’ve been able to do it much faster and basically do a lot better job of imaging in a lot of places in a way that we weren’t able to do previously — significantly shortening timelines and improving the technology that’s coming out that basically is the bread and butter that drives everything that we do from prospect selection to actual drilling selection. TH The other place where we’re really seeing the most uplift is where you’ve got large amounts of data that you can actually filter through very quickly. An example I’ll just use is like in Egypt, where we’ve got thousands of wells, and we’re going to start exploring for deeper plays. How can AI help you do that? If you can upload all the drilling and well reports, you can query it in a way that you were never able to query it manually — of those thousands of wells, how many actually drilled the Paleozoic? Of those, how many actually saw reservoir in the Paleozoic? And then you can filter those down — of those thousands of wells, we’ve actually got 50 in the basin that are relevant, for example. It’s just an example of how you can filter that down, and then you’ve focused in on the wells that you really need to look at to evaluate the play. So the two things: high data density areas, and areas where you need a lot of computing power — those are where we’re seeing the biggest uplifts. NB It’s really interesting to think about that uplift in the context of an industry that has struggled to find new oil and gas volumes. The pure volume of discoveries have declined — our figures show something like generally below 10 billion barrels of oil equivalent for the past two to three years, down from as much as 50 back in 2010 or 35 to 50 in the 2010s. [32:00] NB Is there an exploration crisis going on in the industry, or is this simply another cycle in a cyclical world? TH I really think it’s another cycle in a cyclical world. If you look at what’s happening in exploration globally, yes, volumes are declining. But if you separate out where wells are being drilled and plays that are being tested — exploring in proven basins versus emerging basins versus frontier basins — there are plays that are being opened up. And the success rates in the emerging basins, if you break those out, has actually been better. And if you think about what we’ve done over the last 10 to 15 years — opening up Guyana-Suriname, opening up the Orange Basin in Namibia, the Eastern Med, and now Alaska — there are plays that are being opened and resources that are being added. TH But the underinvestment in exploration over the last decade is going to have a significant impact. And that’s why you’re seeing such a renewed interest in exploration today. You’re seeing supermajors now out hoovering up acreage along the West African coast again and taking up large positions to explore, seeing companies trying to get into the hot basins like Namibia, Suriname, Alaska. They had the biggest lease sale ever in Alaska. And you’re starting to see pure unconventional players step out and look at places like Alaska and take up acreage positions to start to diversify their portfolios. TH So I think the view is definitely shifting from renewables and diminishing value to: we’ve got a big demand gap that we need to meet between now and even 2050, based on the IEA stats. People are out replenishing their portfolios and looking for a much more balanced portfolio that can deliver long-term value, where that view seven years ago was much shorter term. We’ve sort of moved from an ILX mentality in the early 2020s now to: we actually need to replenish these portfolios and give ourselves some long-term optionality for growth. NB So this isn’t necessarily a case of the large finds having simply been found — rather that companies, the incentives they had, the strategies they put together over this preceding period, weren’t necessarily lending themselves to finding large volumes of new oil and gas. Is that the right way to think about it? TH I’m grinning because I can’t tell you how many times in my career I’ve heard that statement: all the big things have been found globally. And then invariably somebody goes out and finds something massive again somewhere else. That statement was made before the Liza discovery in Guyana, in the Med before the Leviathan, and some of the big discoveries that have been made, and the Baleine discovery on Northwest Africa — that was a big one for E&I as well. People always have that mentality. But then again, technology and new ideas always tend to deliver the next generation of prospectivity and open things up. Alaska is a great example. Suriname-Guyana is a great example. My hope is that Uruguay is going to be the next big example as well. That always seems like we come up with technology to push the envelope, drill deeper, drill into deeper water, and come up with new ideas that we’ve not tested yet. NB As you said in our conversation before we sat down to tape, oil is found in the minds of men and women and not necessarily just in the ground. TH No, it’s true. There was a headline I saw this morning that was relevant. They have a big conference in Aberdeen this year — the EAGE, the European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers — one of the bigger technical conferences with a big aspect on exploration. The headline out of that this morning was: basically, after a lost decade in exploration, exploration is back and we’re entering the demand decade. [36:00] TH And the way you’re seeing the activity levels in terms of bid rounds and acreage acquisitions and a lot of the big moves that people are making in the exploration space, I think bears that out. NB Tracey, it’s been a fascinating conversation. Is there anything that we’ve missed or any parting thoughts you’d like to leave with our listeners? TH I’ll go back to your question of what gets me up every morning. I’m very excited about what we’re doing. 2027 is going to be a really active year. We’ve talked through a lot of the portfolio. We’re drilling in Alaska starting this winter. We will be back to drilling exploration in Suriname in 2027, and looking to drill a well in Uruguay in 2027 as well. If I look at the big exploration things and big things that we’re going to do as Apache over the next 12 to 18 months, there’s a lot that we’re looking forward to and a lot that we’re going to go test. So it’s going to be fun to watch. NB Look forward to having you back on the program so we can talk about some of those successes. Tracey, thank you so much for joining us. TH You’re very welcome. Thank you, Noah. NB [OUTRO] Thanks for listening to Let’s Talk Energy. This podcast is a Rystad Energy production produced by Elliot Busby and Bade Og. Check out the show notes for further analysis on the topics we’ve discussed today and connect with us on social media — we’re at Rystad Energy on all your major platforms. While you’re there, please leave us a review, hit that subscribe button, and give us a like. You can also keep up to date on our website. 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