Anyone following Anadarko Petroleum (NYSE: APC) for some time knows that the company has persistently pruned its portfolio. Middle Eastern assets have been sold to Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY), and a host of domestic properties have been monetized as well. When you've got a company in slice-and-dice mode, it's important to keep your eye on the comparable quarterly results.

Anadarko posted 8% production growth from its retained properties, which doubles Apache's (NYSE: APA) achievement. This result came in at the high end of expectations and enabled Anadarko to maintain its full-year forecast, despite an extended outage at the monster Independence Hub in the Gulf of Mexico.

Hedging hindered price realizations a bit, with natural gas fetching $6.17 per thousand cubic feet and oil sales at a bit over $78 a barrel. Discretionary cash flow was still a thunderous $1.87 billion, which tops the cash creation over at hard-charging Chesapeake Energy (NYSE: CHK).

In addition to ramping up operations in areas like Utah's Uinta Basin and Wyoming's Powder River Basin, Anadarko continues to find ways to unlock value in its asset portfolio. Recent highlights include a farm-out of Texas properties to TXCO Resources (Nasdaq: TXCO) and the sale of two deepwater Gulf of Mexico interests. While both of the latter were originally sold to StatoilHydro (NYSE: STO), Anadarko's two partners in the BP- (NYSE: BP) operated Kaskida property exercised their right of first refusal and snapped up the interest for themselves.

Finally, Anadarko is also giving its midstream IPO another go. It'll be nice to see this distraction finally set aside, so Anadarko can focus on what it does best -- finding and producing hydrocarbons.

Related Foolishness:

Chesapeake is an Inside Value pick, and StatoilHydro is an Income Investor selection. Tuck into any of our newsletter services free for 30 days.

Fool contributor Toby Shute doesn't have a position in any company mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.