By Claire Poole

A story in The Wall Street Journal this past Friday got dealmakers talking about possible consolidation partners in the oil patch. Deep-pocketed global oil majors have fewer places to invest their money to keep growing their reserves; lower oil and stock prices have created bargains in the market; and increasingly tighter and more expensive credit markets have made it difficult for smaller companies to borrow money to grow.

The article said possible buyers included integrated oil giants like ExxonMobil Corp. (with $39 billion in cash at the end of the last quarter and 2.8 billion shares in its treasury), BP plc and Royal Dutch Shell plc, as well as oil and gas producers such as Devon Energy Corp. and Occidental Petroleum Corp.

Bond research firm GimmeCredit LLC said in a report Tuesday to add Apache Corp. to the list. The Houston company has been a steady buyer over the years, its largest deal being its $1.3 billion purchase of 18 producing fields in the Gulf of Mexico from BP in early 2006. This year, it’s only done three deals worth $301 million, mostly because it’s been cheaper to make money through the drill bit than through acquisitions. Apache is known for making property acquisitions rather than company acquisitions, and GimmeCredit says now is the perfect time.

“With energy prices down significantly since July, property acquisitions, perhaps in some new emerging resource plays, might be in the works,” GimmeCredit analyst Philip Adams wrote.

Apache certainly has the wherewithal: In the last four quarters, Apache had free cash flow of $2.2 billion, and at the end of June, it had $2 billion in cash on hand. Its total debt-to-capitalization is running at only 20% after having eliminated $1 billion in debt over the past five quarters, making the credit rating agencies happy.

Possible Apache targets? GimmeCredit didn’t speculate, but Pritchard Capital Partners LLC said in a report Sept. 16 that companies with strong underlying value propositions include Berry Petroleum Co., Unit Corp. and Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., all of whom are low-cost producers and none of whom have any balance sheet isuses. Berry and Cabot have properties in the hot Haynesville natural gas area in Louisiana, and Cabot is also in the emerging Marcellus area in the northeast. Ultra Petroleum Corp. has also been a rumored-about Apache target, given its valuable properties in Wyoming’s Green River Basin.

The Journal mentioned Petrohawk Energy Corp. and Southwestern Energy Co. as possible acquisition targets in general — Petrohawk for its impressive amount of leases in Haynesville and Southwestern for its position in Arkansas. It may be time for Apache to start hunting.