Areas

Canada’s BNK Petroleum Inc. announced Sunday that its subsidiary in the United States has so far seen “very encouraging results” from a test well in southern Oklahoma’s Tishomingo field, in the Ardmore Basin of the Woodford Shale.

Comstock Resources Inc. announced Monday that it plans to spend about $420 million on exploration and development activities in 2013, with a drilling program focused on its oil-weighted holdings in South and West Texas — in the Eagle Ford Shale and Wolfbone and Wolfcamp formations in the Permian Basin, respectively.

Higher natural gas and oil resource estimates should continue through 2013 for several onshore unconventional areas, especially in “pockets of the Permian Basin,” the Niobrara formation, as well as the Eagle Ford and “super-rich” Marcellus and Utica shales, according to Credit Suisse.

Marathon Oil Corp.’s $5.2 billion capital, investment and exploration budget for 2013 is about 65% targeted toward liquids-rich areas, particularly the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (DPU) will focus on two areas as it investigates the recent natural gas explosion on the Columbia Gas Co. of Massachusetts’ system that rocked Springfield, MA — when the sidewalk markings indicating the location of the distribution system were made and why they were incorrect, a department spokeswoman told NGI.

The Pennsylvania General Assembly has passed a bill that authorizes the state Department of General Services (DGS) to lease state-owned land for oil and natural gas drilling, as well as mining for coal, limestone and collecting coalbed methane.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) plans to unveil a map that outlines economically viable areas of the state’s portion of the Utica/Point Pleasant Shale by late September, which could provide oil and natural gas operators with a valuable tool to use for future exploration.

Although among the smaller, less-life threatening of Colorado’s wildfires so far this summer, the Pine Ridge fire along the Western Slope tested the gas industry with the shutting in of more than 100 wells in part of the Piceance Basin (see Shale Daily, July 9), but the response was effective and expected by the gas industry, according to Encana Corp.’s manager in charge on the ground, David Grisso.

Calgary-based Talisman Energy is abandoning a project it had considered with Sasol Canada to develop Canada’s first gas-to-liquids (GTL) facility to create transportation fuels from natural gas.