Goodrich Petroleum Corp. has acquired a bigger leasehold in the Haynesville Shale and increased its capital spending plan for the year to accommodate more drilling. The Houston-based independent producer also upped its production guidance for the second quarter.

Goodrich agreed to pay $3.325 million to an undisclosed company to acquire a 50% nonoperated interest in 5,800 gross acres (2,900 net) in the Central Pine Island field, which is adjacent to its Longwood field holdings in Caddo Parish, LA. With the completion of this transaction and a joint venture with Chesapeake Energy Corp. announced earlier this month (see Daily GPI, June 17), Goodrich has a leasehold of about 22,000 net acres in northern Louisiana.

Goodrich participated in an initial well on the latest acquired acreage and said it expects to reach a total depth through the Haynesville Shale on the Hall 5 No. 1 well by the end of the month.

Initial well results from the Longwood prospect are expected within 60 days, and “in East Texas, we are extremely encouraged by the results of our initial vertical Haynesville Shale wells at Minden and Beckville,” said COO Robert Turnham. “The two initial Haynesville Shale wells in East Texas are located a little more than six miles from each other and provide meaningful data points as to the prospectivity of the play over our acreage block in Panola and Rusk counties. Our current plans include the drilling of several additional vertical tests to be followed by our initial horizontal development on our East Texas block by the end of the year.”

Based on field production numbers through the second week of June, second quarter output is expected to be 8-11% sequentially higher than in the first quarter; Goodrich had earlier estimated that sequential production would increase 5-9%. Net daily production volumes for the second quarter now are expected to average between 62,500 Mcfe/d and 64,000 Mcfe/d.

Based on higher drilling plans, Goodrich’s board bumped up capital spending for this year to $350 million from $275 million. The producer also added incremental hedge production for a portion of its 2009 production and entered into a costless collar transaction with a floor of $9.50/MMBtu and a ceiling of $16.90/MMBtu on 10,000 MMBtu/d for calendar year 2009.

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