Nabors Industries Ltd , the world's largest land-drilling contractor, plans to shed its non-core oil and gas exploration and production assets under its new chief executive, Anthony Petrello. The company had sought last year to sell off its British Columbian natural gas assets and also float its NFR Energy joint venture on the stock market, but persistently cheap North American gas put both those plans on hold.Nabors has an extensive oil and gas position in Colombia as well as acreage on Alaska's North Slope and in Texas and Arkansas. Petrello told investors that these interests were clearly not core assets, and he planned to "rectify" that.The company also expects to have 130 rigs working outside the United States by the end of 2012, he said. That would be an increase of 25 rigs, including 10 going back to work in Saudi Arabia, according to Petrello, who took over as CEO from Gene Isenberg at the end of October."It will be a record for the longest succession plan in history," Petrello, who became the Nabors chief operating officer in 1992, said at the start of his presentation to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Energy Conference in Miami on Tuesday.
Nabors Industries Ltd. (Nabors) is a land drilling contractor and a land well-servicing and workover contractor in the United States and Canada. Shares of NBR traded higher by 0.25% or $0.0501/share to $20.03. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $11.73 and as high as $32.47. On average, 8388780 shares of NBR exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 6136756.
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