Belco Oil & Gas CEO Robert Belfer talks to The Wall Street Transcript.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 16, 1998--The Wall Street Transcript has published an in-depth interview with Robert A. Belfer of Belco Oil & Gas Corp. (NYSE:BOG), in which he talks at length about his company's future.

He states, "Let me say that Belco is a young company, founded in 1992, but with old roots going back to the mid-`50s. Four of the seven Directors of Belco were with a former company, Belco Petroleum Corporation, which is now a part of Enron Corp. In 1992 when my son finished law school, he had heard about all of the good times we had in the oil and gas patch and thought it would be nice to start another company; so we did in 1992. We went back to Wyoming where the old Belco had its roots, and started a successful drilling program along the Moxa Arch."

He explains, "Later that year we were exposed to drilling in the Austin Chalk where there appeared to be some breakthroughs in technology. A lot of people had thought that the Chalk was a graveyard based on the industry's experience in Pearsall Field, but working with another company and applying more modern technology, we were able to make a substantial success with the Chalk. We recognized that we had a rather sizable company on our hands and decided to go public in March of 1996 with Goldman Sachs and Smith Barney as our managers."

He asserts, "In terms of capital, let me say that Belco continues to have very substantial cash flow and we expect to maintain a high level of capital expenditures. It will be partially directed at trying to make acquisitions in what we think is going to be an increasingly attractive acquisition market. We think that a lot of the potential sellers have been holding on, waiting for a quick turn in the market, and as each week passes by, we think that it becomes increasingly likely that the negotiating position is going to move in favor of the buyers, and so we expect to be able to use our substantial cash flow and our close to $125 million unutilized line of bank credit to take advantage in this low pricing environment."

To read the complete interview, go to http://www.twst.com/pdf/bog.pdf. It requires Adobe Acrobat (tm) reader to view the document. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse the views of any interviewees nor does it make stock recommendations.

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