HOUSTON—Managing a global oil and gas company without knowing when commodity prices will reverse their downward trend or when global instability will impact business requires focus.

The key for Noble Energy (NYSE: NBL) in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico (GoM) is maintaining a high exploration success rate, having competitive economics and an inventory that contains a prize worth chasing, Noble CEO David Stover said during Hart Energy’s second annual Offshore Executive Conference.

His words came as depressed commodity prices, the result of a supply-demand imbalance, continued to force companies to pay closer attention to costs and seek out technologies to improve efficiencies and grow production. Dire market conditions may have caused some to consider halting investment offshore, especially given a strong shale presence onshore.

But “the resource visibility has probably never been greater,” Stover said of the GoM’s assets. Technology improvements that made way for deeper drilling and seismic advances have given improved visibility to the GoM’s resource potential. Noble sees opportunity.

“We see an opportunity this year to get into some low-cost entry positions on things that probably wouldn’t have been available in other years,” Stover said, noting Noble has essentially two business lines—onshore in U.S. shale plays and deepwater.

Developments offshore might have taken the backseat to headline-grabbing onshore unconventional plays in the United States. But the resurrection of the GoM quietly continues due in part to the region’s low above-ground risk, favorable fiscal terms and low break-evens. Investment research by Goldman Sachs of 420 oil projects revealed the break-evens for the GoM was as low as $40. But that was as of May 2015.

“One of the keys that has continued to drive our involvement has been our track record of success and our exploration and discovery rate,” Stover said. “We’re bringing on about 20,000 barrels a day net in new projects. It’s going to give us great momentum as we end this year and into next year.”

Since entering the U.S. Gulf of Mexico in 1968 when it acquired a single offshore block, Noble has grown its GoM portfolio to 524,000 acres. The company has about 42 million barrels of oil equivalent in proved reserves as of year-end 2014.

Noble’s eight producing fields produced more than 18,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d) last year, but that recently increased when production—mostly oil—started at the Noble-operated Big Bend and Dantzler deepwater projects. Stover turned to the projects’ short cycle times and prolific rates, providing an example of how offshore projects can compete economically with new unconventional plays.

The Mississippi Canyon fields, both subsea tiebacks to the Thunder Hawk platform, are expected to add more than 40,000 boe/d, half of which is net to Noble. The Big Bend development went from discovery to production within three years. The Dantzler project moved even quicker, moving from discovery to production in two years.

“That’s how you compete economically,” Stover said.

The feat is something Noble aims to accomplish with each of its projects.

Attracting capital to the GoM requires a sizable resource price, a stable regulatory environment and competitive economics, he said. The latter involves lowering cycle times, improving cost structures and having strong cash operating margins, and it could call for using existing infrastructure, which Stover said has enabled the company to compete in the GoM.

Attention must also be paid to managing costs.

He pointed out that not only have rig costs come down, so has drilling, deepwater facilities and pipeline costs among other areas.

“You can still have very good margins in the Gulf compared to some other areas,” Stover said. But “the resource prize has to be there. … There has to be a prize worth going for.”

Original reserves of the GoM Outer Continental Shelf’s 1,300 oil and gas fields were estimated to be 22.19 billion barrels of oil and 193 trillion cubic feet of gas in 2013, according to the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

Data from Wood Mackenzie showed that production continues to grow in deepwater GoM despite falling rig counts. Liquids production rose from about 1.4 million barrels per day (MMbbl/d) of oil in 2014 to about 1.5 MMbbl/d by August 2015, while the average rig count has dropped 32% since last year.

The 10-year deepwater commercial success rate for the industry is 20%. Noble’s is 55%.

In 2016, the company’s focus will be on exploration and appraisal in the GoM, he added.

“We’ll hit the ground running at the beginning of the year on a new exploration well, followed by our Katmai appraisal well later in the year,” Stover said.

Noble hopes to have operations at Gunflint discovery, also in the Mississippi Canyon area, up and running by mid-2016. The subsalt Miocene find will also be a subsea tieback, to the Gulfstar One. So far, the second development well has been sidetracked and completion operations along with the installation of pipelines and subsea installations have begun.

Velda Addison can be reached at vaddison@hartenergy.com.

Offshore