At every investor conference, E&P executives tout their company’s growth potential. This is nothing new, but the boasts have taken on added color thanks to the horizontal frac boom that is reviving every basin in the country.

People now talk about how many drilling locations they have in hand and how many years of drilling lie ahead. These multiple-stacked-pay basins such as the Permian give them a force multiplier, or as one executive said, an acreage multiplier. Mother Nature has bestowed treasures; we need to roll up our sleeves and get after it.

The vast potential often assumes no joint ventures or drilling carries that would enable the E&Ps to speed up their drilling pace and bring even greater net present value forward to shareholders more quickly. Here’s the way to go about it: Use third-party money to fund development and use cash flow to fund exploration. That’s the Anadarko Petroleum Corp. way, according to new chief executive officer Al Walker, speaking to investors at the 41st annual Howard Weil Energy Conference in March.

In the Eagle Ford shale alone, APC has close to 2,500 locations. But it’s not alone. EOG Resources’ chief executive Mark Papa told attendees that EOG has 4,900 locations there, and at present, it can drill about 400 wells per year, net, in this one play.

What about in the Permian? “We have 83 years of drilling in the Leonard shale,” Papa said. “It’s kind of ridiculous. And we have over 100 in the Wolfcamp. Nobody has the inventory that we do, and we’ll be increasing the pace.”

Concho Resources Inc. has more than 650 horizontal Yeso locations in inventory and 4,000-plus horizontal locations in the northern Delaware Basin, chief executive Tim Leach told attendees. In the Marcellus play, industry leader Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. has more than 3,000 locations, and by year-end, it will have 60% of the acreage held by production, at which time it will shift to more pad drilling, further reducing well costs.

Whiting Petroleum Corp. president Jim Brown said the company has been criticized for not having enough drilling inventory. That was in part because the company provided only third-party engineering estimates of derisked locations—and then E&P analysts risked them again, cutting the number further. No wonder!

In the end, it’s important to build an inventory that will last. So the other thing we like about investor confabs is the way many companies finish with that tantalizing last slide: the stealth play. For example, Southwestern Energy Co.’s Steve Mueller mentioned that while capex in the Fayetteville and Marcellus will be nearly equal this year, some 10% of the budget will be deployed in “new ventures.”

Halcon Resources Corp.’s Floyd Wilson told attendees, “We’ve got a couple of wildcat deals rolling around in the background, always.”

We love the stealth plays. Yesterday’s mystery play has turned into today’s big thing, and today’s stealth play could end up being the new, new thing two years from now.

Once, the Eagle Ford shale was not on anyone’s radar. But, it was on a computer screen in Wilson’s former company, Petrohawk Energy, where a couple of geologists kept pouring over logs and other data and saying to each other, “What if?”

At Anadarko, drilling in Mozambique was once on the new-ventures list, an idea that perhaps kept a geologist up at night pondering the possibilities. Should I propose to management that we plunge into this and create that first-mover advantage?

Current stealth ideas that may take shape in the next 12 months: The Denver-Julesburg Basin south of Colorado Springs as an extension of Wattenberg Field, the Shannon-Sussex play in the Powder River Basin, more benches in the Niobrara; and a silt layer that’s difficult to drill, found between the Bakken shale benches. And, yes, the Brown Dense and Tuscaloosa Marine plays look like they are economic in some areas, but not in others. Too, we hear whispers about something afoot in the Illinois Basin, and in the horizontal Wilcox play in Louisiana.

Without these stealth plays, the industry cannot move forward—even though it already has more on its plate than it can say grace over.

We hope to see you at two of our upcoming events: DUG Bakken and Niobrara in Denver on May 30 and 31; and the annual Energy Capital Conference in Houston on June 18. In Denver, CEOs will be discussing how they manage the fast-growing Bakken and Niobrara plays, bring down costs and increase EURs. In Houston, CEOs and other experts will explore key issues common in all boardrooms: where to get money and the best ways to spend it, reducing costs, improving returns, succession planning, and more. An exciting part of this event is that we will unveil the winners of our 10th annual Oil and Gas Investor Excellence Awards for 2012. Who is our CEO of the Year? Which deal wins M&A of the Year? Where is the Best Discovery? Come to Energy Capital to find out and hear from the winners.