Distressed Bakken, Eagle Ford asset sales seen soon -Anadarko CEO

HOUSTON, Nov 10 (Reuters) - Financial distress is soon
expected to trigger long-awaited sales of oil and gas
properties in North Dakota's Bakken and Texas' Eagle Ford basin,
the chief executive of Anadarko Petroleum Corp (N:APC) APC.N said on
Tuesday.
A prolonged downturn in crude oil prices has generated lots
of chatter that companies laboring under heavy debt that operate
shale fields with high break-even costs will have to sell assets
to generate much-needed cash.
As low crude oil prices linger for more than a year,
distress is intensifying and may finally bring some of those
properties to market.
"We've not really seen good distressed assets make their way
into the market," CEO Al Walker told investors at Bank of
America Merrill Lynch's Global Energy Conference. "For companies
that have positions in the Bakken, they probably will start to
see that sooner than others."
Distressed Eagle Ford asset sales are also likely in the
near-term, said the CEO of the Houston-based company that has
shale wells in Eagle Ford.
Still, Anadarko is most interested in adding assets in areas
where it already had access to pipelines and other
infrastructure needed to bring oil to gas to market like
Colorado's DJ Basin and West Texas' Delaware Basin, said Walker.
Pioneer Natural Resources Co PXD.N CEO Scott Sheffield
said at another conference on Tuesday that he believed the
Permian Basin "is the only place long-term to grow oil in this
country."
Permian operators have dozens of layers of oil-bearing rock
to drill, while wells in the Bakken and Eagle Ford have big
decline rates, said Sheffield.
He said he would not be surprised if Pioneer's Eagle Ford
acreage was not part of the company in five years. He said while
the Eagle Ford contributes 20 to their production.