Oxy

It is not an accident that Occidental Oil & Gas Corporation is one of the largest independent oil and gas producers in the world. The company, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, has three-pronged approach to making money from gas and oil -- acquisitions, exploration, and enhanced oil recovery. Occidental Oil & Gas has large, long-lived assets concentrated in the US, the Middle East, and Latin America (Colombia and Argentina). The company is the top oil producer in the Permian Basin (Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas), the largest natural gas producer in California, and a major player in Piceance Basin. It is the largest leaseholder of oil and gas exploration acreage in Libya.

The company has been divesting smaller, widely-dispersed non-core assets and acquiring several major assets in California and the Permian Basin. In 2008 it also acquired $1.2 billion of assets in the Permian and Piceance basins from Plains Exploration & Production. At the end of 2009 some 56% of Occidental's proved reserves were located in Elk Hills and in the Permian Basin.

Occidental Oil & Gas is investing heavily in the Dolphin Project, the leading cross-border natural gas project in the Middle East/Gulf region (Qatar and the UAE). Further boosting its assets in the region, in 2008 it also teamed up with Abu Dhabi National Oil Company  to develop oil and gas fields in the emirate.