Royal Dutch/Shell is still interested in increasing its U.S. gas position-affordably. At the recent KPMG global energy conference in Houston, Philip Watts, the company's managing directors committee chairman, said, when asked if the company is still interested in buying Rockies gas, "Well, it would depend on the price." The company lost a bid in 2001 to buy Barrett Resources and its 2.1 trillion cubic feet equivalent of reserves, mostly gas. The Williams Cos. won. Since then, Shell has made downstream-sector acquisitions and purchased U.K.-based Enterprise Oil Plc but none of the deals has brought it significant U.S. gas reserves and production. At a recent SPE Gulf Coast Section business-development program, also in Houston, Shell E&P Co. (Sepco) manager, MD&A, Bjorn Fermin, said of the company's failed bid for Barrett two years ago, "We were seen in the market more or less as tire-kickers, but we're willing to pay." The company has made huge U.S. upstream divestments during the past few years. When showing a map of the U.S. with a few red blots where Sepco operates now, Fermin said, "If we would have shown this picture four years ago, it would have been red all over the place." Its divestments continue, too: its long-time Michigan assets are for sale, as well as some in the U.K. North Sea. BP Plc also has U.S. divestments under way-in Oklahoma, south Louisiana, south Texas, the Rockies and Arkansas. Terry Gerhart, BP vice president, business development, onshore U.S., said at the SPE-GCS program that these are all the company's large-scale upstream divestment plans for 2003. It sold its U.S. shallow Gulf of Mexico business to Apache Corp. and Permian Basin assets to Occidental Petroleum earlier this year. It isn't buying assets right now. Gerhart joked that he forgot to bring to the meeting, the list of companies BP is currently targeting for acquisition. "In all seriousness, we're not looking at that right now," he added. ConocoPhillips is also in net-seller mode. Scott Anderson, ConocoPhillips manager, upstream A&D, added, at the program, that the company will put up for sale this summer Lower 48 assets three times the size of its recent Permian Basin divestment. "We are looking at acquisitions but are focused on divestments," he said. The company has assets right now, as a result of the merger of Conoco and Phillips, that "made sense for one company but didn't make sense for both." It aims to increase its exposure to the upstream business, over time, and "we're very focused right now on value enhancement." 2003 asset sales will total $800 million to $2 billion, including some downstream assets. -Nissa Darbonne