Norway’s StatoilHydro ASA agreed to pay Chesapeake Energy Corp. $3.38 billion to gain a stake in the Marcellus Shale. About $1.25 billion will be paid for a 32.5% stake in the acreage and $2.13 billion will be set aside to fund 75% of drilling and completion costs from 2009 to 2012.

The agreement ended speculation about which producer Chesapeake would make a deal with on its Marcellus acreage. BP plc, which has completed two transactions with the Oklahoma City-based producer this year, had been rumored to be on the list of prospective buyers (see Daily GPI, Nov. 6). Chesapeake announced that it would sell a stake in the Marcellus acreage earlier this year (see Daily GPI, Aug. 13).

StatoilHydro’s equity production from the Marcellus Shale should approach “at least 50,000 boe/d” in 2012, peaking to at least 200,000 boe/d after 2020, said Executive Vice President Peter Mellbye.

On a per-acre basis, StatoilHydro is paying Chesapeake around $5,800/acre net. By comparison, Mellbye noted that BP two months ago paid Chesapeake around $14,000/acre net for leaseholds in the Fayetteville and Woodford shales (see Daily GPI, Sept. 3).

“BP paid an awful lot more for the rights they acquired,” Mellbye said. “But they bought in an area that’s much more mature where you find much more experience, so the risk is less but so is the upside potential.”

StatoilHydro is one of the leading players in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, and its U.S. gas portfolio is growing (see Daily GPI, March 5; Sept. 6, 2006).

The Norwegian producer this year agreed to purchase 1 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas from the Cove Point, MD, receiving terminal from 2009 to 2014, and it secured all of the terminal’s new capacity, which would amount to about 10 billion cubic meters of gas annually, beginning in 2009 (see Daily GPI, March 4). In addition, StatoilHydro last year paid $2.1 billion for an oilsands company in Canada.

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