Agreeing

Hess Corp. has ended a proxy battle with major shareholder Elliott Management Corp. (4.4%) by agreeing to appoint three Elliott-backed nominees to its board of directors. The reconstituted board would comprise 14 members; nine were replaced following the annual meeting Thursday. The activist hedge fund, which had claimed that the company was mismanaged and controlled by Hess family interests, agreed to support five Hess nominees. The board now will be reelected every year instead of every three. Elliott also led the charge to split the chairman and CEO roles, now held by John Hess, the son of the company’s founder, and it has forced the company to sell its downstream arm and monetize Bakken Shale midstream assets.

Western Gas Partners LP is expanding its business in the Marcellus Shale after agreeing to pay $620 million-plus for stakes in two natural gas liquids (NGL) gathering systems in Pennsylvania that have combined throughput of more than 1.2 Bcf/d.

China’s Sinopec International Petroleum Exploration and Production Corp. has added to its considerable leasehold in the Mississippian Lime formation after agreeing to pay Chesapeake Energy Corp. $1.02 billion in cash for half of its 850,000 net acres.

While agreeing to defer nearly 10,000 acres, the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) finds itself as the target of strong opposition from local residents as it attempts to conduct an oil and natural gas lease sale in mid-February in central Colorado’s North Fork Valley.

Williams is taking the long view on North America’s natural gas, agreeing last week to significantly build its onshore pipeline network by putting up to $2.4 billion into a system once owned by Chesapeake Energy Corp.

Williams is taking the long view on North America’s natural gas, agreeing to significantly build its onshore pipeline network by putting up to $2.4 billion into a system once owned by Chesapeake Energy Corp.

Atlas Resource Partners LP (ARP) has picked up its third big leasehold this year in the Barnett Shale by agreeing to pay $255 million to DTE Energy Co. for an affiliate that owns close to 35 million boe of proved reserves in the Fort Worth Basin and in the Marble Falls, TX, area.

ExxonMobil Corp. has increased its hold in the Bakken Shale to nearly 600,000 net acres after agreeing to acquire Denbury Resources Inc.’s entire portfolio in the play, 196,000 net acres. The North Dakota and Montana properties had average production in the first six months of this year of about 15,400 boe/d, 88% weighted to oil and liquids.

Boardwalk Pipeline Partners LP and an affiliate leaped into the natural gas liquids business late Thursday by agreeing to pay $625 million in cash to buy PL Midstream, whose Choctaw and Sulphur salt dome hubs in southern Louisiana provide salt dome storage, pipeline transportation, fractionation and brine supply services for petrochemical producers in Louisiana.