Contrary to published news reports, Whiting Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: WLL) likely isn’t up for sale or selling assets to appease stockholders.

Jim Volker, company CEO, told Hart on March 12 that the sale “is a rumor and Whiting doesn’t comment on rumors.”

The company purchased Kodiak Oil & Gas in December for about $6 billion to secure a dominate position in the Williston Basin. On March 6, it was reported to be shopping itself in an article by the Wall Street Journal. Motives for the sale ranged from Volker wanting to retire to Whiting taking on too much debt in the Kodiak deal.

A March 13 report from Reuters says the company is considering selling acreage as an alternative to a full sale of the company to appease investors upset over the potential outright sale.

However, Whiting had already announced plans to sell off $1 billion in assets in February, when it disclosed on an earnings call it wanted to increase its liquidity.

A company spokesman echoed Volker in saying the company doesn’t comment on rumor and speculation.

At year end 2014, WLL had $5.6 billion in long term debt and its current market cap is $6.4 billion, said Pearce Hammond, managing director, Simmons & Co. International.

“We expect WLL’s Debt/EBITDAX ratio to widen to an uncomfortable 4.1x at year end 2016 and decline to 3.8x at year end 2017,” Hammond said.

Whiting already has solid liquidity. At the end of 2014, the company had $4.5 billion of bank commitments with $1.4 billion drawn on their credit facility against $3.1 billion in total liquidity.

Reuters reported March 13 that Whiting put its Texas acreage and pipeline assets up for sale as an alternative to a sale of the full company, quoting unnamed sources.

But on a Feb. 26 earnings call, Volker said that the company would be selling assets.

Asked by an analyst if that include a pipeline, Volker responded tersely, “Properties.”

He then added, “Lower value properties. As you know, we're getting back the properties from First Trust that we sold. That's a couple thousand barrels a day. And we have another similar group of properties that are not key to our rapid growth plans and are not as high a rate of return obviously in terms of any future development. So, we're looking at those as well.”

Volker said he didn’t want to say more but that “we’ll certainly accomplish it within the year, that’s for sure.”

Ongoing asset sales could provide more financial flexibility for 2015 and beyond, Hammond said.

For now, it’s a waiting game on what Whiting might move.

“We believe WLL has several attractive attributes for an acquirer,” he said.

The company has its Bakken/Three Forks position with production of 130 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day (Mboe/d) and 812,000 net acres.

The company also has a Denver-Julesburg Basin asset with 10.2 Mboe/d of production in the fourth quarter of 2014 and 132,000 net acres.

In the Permian Basin, Whiting owns the North Ward Estes EOR asset, with low decline rates and 9.7 Mboe/d of fourth-quarter 2014 production, “which an acquirer could probably sell to an MLP,” he said.