Topic: How To Invest

Q: Pat: What do you think about Noble Energy and its big gas discovery off of Israel?

Article Excerpt

A: Noble Energy, $30.51, symbol NBL on New York (Shares outstanding: 486.6 million; Market cap: $15.3 billion; www.nblenergy.com), explores for and produces oil and natural gas, chiefly in the Gulf of Mexico, East Africa, and the Mediterranean Sea. It also owns 39.66% of the Leviathan field, 130 kilometres off the port of Haifa in Israel. That offshore reserve is located 47 kilometres south-west of another large offshore gas field, the Tamar gas field. Noble also operates that reserve, which was discovered in 2009. More recently, in early 2017, the company sold some of its Marcellus Shale holdings in the U.S. and a portion of its Tamar acreage in the Mediterranean. In November 2017, Noble also agreed to sell 30,000 acres of non-core exploration lands in the Denver-Julesburg Basin of Colorado. The buyer, SRC Energy, will pay $608 million. The sale of more assets is likely. The company’s Leviathan field is expected to start production by the end of 2019, and should fill a growing…