ack in the dark months of early 2009, when deal flow was hibernating, industry analysts, pundits and observers—myself included—looked at Apache Corp.’s reserve pile of $4 billion in cash and credit and believed the historically patient-yet-opportunistic acquirer was on the verge of a buying spree for stranded assets.

And when—finally—the Houston-based E&P split a deal with Occidental Petroleum for Marathon Oil’s Permian assets in March of last year, we all thought the slumber had been broken and Apache would lead the race of cash-fueled buyers gobbling up financially challenged sellers.

Instead, Apache was just rousing for a midwinter bolt-on snack.

Just prior to that deal, Apache chief financial officer Roger Plank said the acquisition environment was the best he had seen in a long time, but shaking hands on a deal was “like grabbing a knife: You invest one day and the next day you could have gotten it for 10% off. At what point do you grab the knife? At some point it’s going to become irresistible.”

Plank said he expected A&D in the oil patch to get worse before it got better. It did.

Fast forward a year. While deals began to pop in second-half 2009, especially in joint-venture form as acreage-rich, cash-constrained producers sought to hold positions, Apache waited, not joining the feeding frenzy.

In April, it leapt on its first prey, taking down Devon Energy’s entire Gulf of Mexico shelf position for $1 billion as the Oklahoma-based producer high-graded to onshore assets in a major worldwide sell-down. Days later, Apache announced it would acquire Mariner Energy for near $4 billion, gaining more shallow Gulf assets paired with 100 deepwater Gulf prospects, and a sizeable Permian position to complement its own.

Then the unimaginable happened. BP Plc’s ill-fated Macondo well offshore Louisiana blew wide open, resulting in the nation’s worst oil-related disaster and a halt to drilling in the Gulf of Mexico until further notice. Apache’s long-awaited acquisitions hung in the balance. The Devon deal closed in June, and the Mariner deal is pending.

But as often happens, crisis brought with it opportunity. Battered by storms of bad PR and financially listing from spill-related expenses, BP needed to sell something big, and quickly. Apache saw a big kill.

Amidst speculation that it would target BP’s Alaskan assets in Prudhoe Bay, Apache instead walked out of the deal room with entire BP business units cherry-picked from the Permian Basin, Canada and Egypt, complementing its portfolio of existing holdings.

In effect, the deals amounted to a $7-billion bolt-on.

Apache chief executive officer Steve Farris was virtually ecstatic in the subsequent conference call. “We are tremendously excited,” he said, adding that the assets are “right in our wheelhouse.”

Apache has made a living off of the failed packages of majors, said Farris, “and for the first time in our history, we have an opportunity to take a major out of three core areas that are going businesses.”

Farris confessed the BP opportunity arrived out of the blue. “I didn’t anticipate this one. If it hadn’t been for the Gulf of Mexico incident, we wouldn’t be sitting here.”

Yet opportunity rewards preparedness. Apache had “lusted after the Egypt properties for a number of years,” said Farris, and regarding the Permian, “This was not the first time we had that discussion.” Future gas production from the Canadian assets will likely be shipped to the Far East via the Apache-operated Kitimat liquefied natural gas facility under construction on British Columbia’s coast.

Farris waved off discussion of BP’s Alaskan assets, saying “a lot of asset mixes were thrown around,” and emphasizing, “We picked this asset mix.” Their absence suggests BP wasn’t willing to give them away cheap.

In aggregate, the deals grow Apache by about 25% in production and reserves alone—adding about 200,000 barrels of oil per day—and nearly triple its acreage footprint worldwide. “All of this growth has come in areas which we know something about. We obviously have taken a step change.”

In 2007 and 2008, in a heated market of rising commodity prices, Apache was derided as too conservative. Now, in less than the four months from April to July, Apache has spent a quick $12 billion in acquisitions.