Our goal from the beginning has been to create value for our investors by building one of the largest onshore natural gas resource bases in the United States. For the past 11 years, our strategy to accomplish this goal has been to focus on developing unconventional plays onshore in the U.S., where we believe we can generate the most attractive risk-adjusted returns.
In building our industry-leading natural gas resource base from 1998-2008, we integrated an aggressive and technologically advanced drilling program with an active property consolidation program focused on small to medium-sized corporate and property acquisitions. During the past two years, we have shifted our strategy from drilling inventory capture to drilling inventory conversion. In doing so, we have de-emphasized acquisitions of proved properties while further emphasizing our industry-leading drilling program and converting our substantial backlog of drilling opportunities into proved developed producing reserves.
Below we’ve detailed several key elements of our business strategy which include: