St. Mary Land says it has balance sheet to pursue high-return projects

By Jennifer Lanning Drey

Portland, Ore., April 13 - St. Mary Land & Exploration Co. has a strong balance sheet that provides the "dry powder" for the company to pursue the projects its deems will have the highest return for its shareholders, chief executive officer Tony Best said Tuesday during a presentation at the IPAA Oil & Gas Investment Symposium in New York.

"Our challenge is to find the most opportunity and the approach to focus our inventory so that as we go forward, we are providing and allocating our capital into the highest return plays," Best said.

The company will look at selling, farming down or joint-venturing its lowest-return projects, he said.

St. Mary currently has a portfolio-optimization initiative underway through which it has divested more than $300 million of non-core assets over the past few months.

Proceeds of the sales were used to repay the company's revolving credit facility.

"We have a lot of liquidity here and availability for doing whatever we need to do in addition to all of the opportunities we have with our properties for drilling, leasing and acquisitions," Jay Ottoson, chief financial officer of St. Mary, said during the presentation.

St. Mary Land & Exploration is a Denver-based independent energy company.

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