2012

Abraxas Petroleum Corp. said a recent Eagle Ford Shale well has been performing better than expected, but its operations in the Williston Basin in North Dakota have been hampered by equipment troubles.

A Pennsylvania driller has bought more than 56,000 acres of leasehold, hundreds of producing natural gas wells and nearly 200 miles of natural gas pipeline and other infrastructure in New York state from a subsidiary of Chesapeake Energy Corp. It said it plans to drill vertical wells on the acquisition acreage this year.

PetroQuest Energy Inc. said Monday it has closed on the sale of its assets in the Fayetteville Shale for about $9.2 million as it shifts its focus to production of natural gas liquids (NGL) from other plays, including the Woodford Shale and the Mississippian Lime formation.

An expansion of Seaway Crude Oil Pipeline is nearing completion and will increase capacity from about 150,000 b/d to about 400,000 b/d, said Seaway Crude Oil Pipeline LLC, a joint venture of Enterprise Products Partners and Enbridge Inc. Seaway suspended service on its 500-mile, 30-inch diameter pipeline to complete the remaining pump station connections. Service is expected to resume by Jan. 11. In addition to the pipeline that transports crude oil from Cushing, OK, to the Gulf Coast, the Seaway system is composed of a terminal and distribution network originating in Texas City, TX, which serves refineries locally and in the Houston area. The Seaway system also includes dock facilities at Freeport and Texas City. Further expansion of the system is planned to be completed in 2014 (see Shale Daily, March 28, 2012).

Magnum Hunter Resources Corp. and privately held Eclipse Resources I LP have struck a joint operating agreement covering a leasehold owned by both companies in the Marcellus and Utica shales in Monroe County, OH.

Natural gas cash prices soared Friday following a post-Christmas snow storm that dropped more than a foot of snow on large swaths of the Northeast. A handful of locations in the region even soared north of $10/MMBtu as pipelines were running at capacity with even more cold forecasted in the week ahead.

Chevron Corp. subsidiary Chevron Canada Ltd. will acquire a 50% operating interest in the Kitimat, British Columbia (BC), liquefied natural gas (LNG) export project and proposed Pacific Trail Pipeline (PTP), and a 50% interest in 644,000 acres of petroleum and natural gas rights in the Horn River and Liard Basins in BC, and be a partner in the project and acreage with Apache Corp., the companies said Monday.

With natural gas reserves continuing to increase, U.S. engineers are testing ways to convert methane gas economically into building blocks to produce chemicals, a job traditionally handled by petroleum.

Dominion and Caiman Energy II LLC on Thursday said they are forming Blue Racer Midstream LLC, a $1.5 billion joint venture (JV) that would provide midstream services to natural gas producers operating in the Utica Shale in Ohio and portions of Pennsylvania.