The third biggest U.S. integrated oil company will separate its upstream oil-and-gas explorationandproduction division from its downstream refining division.
Most of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf is off-limits to oil and gas explorationandproduction, even though there are upward of 100 billion barrels of oil and immense amounts of natural gas estimated to be there.
One of them is Apache (APA), one of the major independent natural gas and oil explorationandproduction companies in the U.S. and the fourth largest oil-and-gas company in terms of production.