ExxonMobil Corp. joined two other majors in recent days to build a bigger leasehold in natural gas plays onshore in North America.

The Irving, TX-based major exercised an option to purchase a stake in a portion of the Piceance Basin reserves in Colorado that Williams acquired in May (see Daily GPI, May 9).

Williams expects to receive about $71 million from the agreement; it had paid $285 million in cash to purchase more than 1.9 Tcfe of probable and possible reserves on 24,000 net acres at 10-acre spacing. ExxonMobil purchased around 7,000 of the 24,000 net acres, which represent about 700 Bcfe of the total, Williams said.

The reserves shared by the producers are in the Ryan Gulch area of the Piceance Basin Highlands in Rio Blanco County, CO. About two-thirds of the acreage is in an area of mutual interest in which Williams, as operator, participates with ExxonMobil. ExxonMobil had the option to purchase up to 49% interest in the assets within the area of mutual interest.

The Piceance Basin is Williams’ most prolific gas play, and the company now produces more than 600 MMcf/d in the basin with 26 rigs in operation. Estimated proved, probable and possible reserves in the basin total around 7.3 Tcf; proved reserves were around 2.8 Tcfe at the end of 2007.

In March ExxonMobil executives said that between 2009 and 2010 the company would begin operating its Piceance Tight Gas Phase I in Colorado (see Daily GPI, March 6). Longer term, North American start-ups include future phases of the Piceance tight gas project, some oil and oilsands projects in Canada and Alaska onshore and offshore and two possibles: the Alaska gas/Point Thomson endeavor and the Mackenzie Gas Project.

ExxonMobil, which operates with little fanfare in several of North America’s gas basins, earlier this year acquired 115,000 acres in the gas-rich Horn River Basin in British Columbia with partner Imperial Oil Ltd. (see Daily GPI, May 2).

BP America Inc., a subsidiary of BP plc, agreed Thursday to pay $1.75 billion in cash to acquire all of Chesapeake Energy Corp.’s interests in 90,000 net acres of leasehold and natural gas properties in the Arkoma Basin of the Woodford Shale (see Daily GPI, July 18). And last Monday Royal Dutch Shell plc’s Shell Canada Ltd. offered to pay Duvernay Oil Corp. C$5.9 billion in cash for half a million net acres in the Western Sedimentary Basin, which includes acreage in the Montney tight gas trend in northeastern British Columbia (see Daily GPI, July 15).

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