New York, January 23 (FinanceEnquiry.com) - Apache Corp (NYSE: APA) is acquiring Cordillera Energy Partners in a cash-and-stock deal for $2.85 billion. The biggest U.S. energy explorer will get 254,000 acres, which is located on top of a deeply buried layer of rock in the Granite Wash at the Texas-Oklahoma border.

The deal exhibits how the U.S. oil business is being rewritten with new drilling techniques of recovering oil and natural gas, such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. This deal is Apache’s second in the past 16 years, in which it has invested more than $500 million.

Apache is planning to double its acreage in Granite Wash by acquiring Denver-based Cordillera’s existing production there. There is a boom in U.S. energy production with new innovative techniques of drilling that involve obtaining large deposits of fossil fuels from dense rock, which is broken by horizontal drilling with a mixture of water, sand and chemicals. Oil and natural gas can then flow through the cracks created by the drilling technique.

The high amount of energy production in the U.S. has brought down natural gas prices last week to 10-year lows. Apache and other companies are grabbing the opportunity to tap natural gas from the Granite Wash, which is considered to be a “hot emerging opportunity” in an oil and natural-gas reservoir.