Gastar Exploration Ltd. is selling its interest in the Culp Draw and Table Mountain areas of the Powder River Basin for $2.4 million in cash from an undisclosed buyer. Gastar, headquartered in Mount Pleasant, MI, owns about 3,033 acres in the leases, and said it would retain a small overriding royalty interest. The sale is expected to close in about 45 days. “Along with the funds from our previously announced Powder River Basin joint venture, this transaction makes additional funds available for our planned activities, including our projects in the Deep Bossier Sands play in East Texas, the deep Trenton-Black River and Devonian Shale plays in West Virginia and our Australian coalbed methane (CBM) plays in New South Wales and Victoria,” said Russell Porter, Gastar’s COO. Gastar’s CBM activities are conducted within Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, and it also owns prospective acreage in East Texas, the Black River play of Appalachia and the East Lost Hills field within the San Joaquin Basin. TransTexas Gas Corp. filed its second Chapter 11 banktruptcy reorganization plan in four years last Friday. The company and its wholly owned subsidiaries, Galveston Bay Processing Corp. and Galveston Bay Pipeline Co., had filed voluntary petitions for relief last November and on May 1 filed their joint plans of reorganization in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, Corpus Christi Division. From April 19, 1999 through March 17, 2000, the company also operated as a debtor-in-possession under Chapter 11 and emerged from bankruptcy on Jan. 31 (see Daily GPI, March 20). TransTexas is engaged in the exploration, production and transmission of natural gas and oil, primarily in South Texas, including the Eagle Bay field in Galveston Bay and the Southwest Bonus field in Wharton County.

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