Auction

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) office in Reno, NV, held an oil/natural gas lease sale involving more than 50,000 acres in two northern counties on Tuesday, and the market spoke loud and clear above the chanting of protesters from the national “Keep It in the Ground” campaign that wants to end leasing on public and tribal lands.

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) said it accepted the results of Dominion East Ohio’s (DEO) auction for its standard service offer (SSO) and standard choice offer (SCO) rates, with gas supplies locked in for applicable customers through March 2017.

Tulsa-based private equity firm BlueStone Natural Resources II has reportedly purchased the U.S. assets of bankruptcy-immersed Quicksilver Resources Inc. for $245 million, according to a company announcement Saturday. An auction was held last Wednesday and Thursday (see Shale Daily,Jan. 20).

Quicksilver Resources Inc. put its U.S. assets, including one-time high-valued ones in the Barnett Shale, on the auction block Wednesday as part of its Chapter 11 voluntary bankruptcy filing last March (see Shale Daily, Feb. 18, 2015). The Fort Worth, TX-based energy company’s Canadian assets, which were not part of the bankruptcy, would be sold separately.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Montana has postponed a Jan. 26 oil and natural gas lease sale in Billings, MT, the third time since November the agency has delayed an auction (see Daily GPI, Dec. 7, 2015; Nov. 17, 2015).

The Mexican government said its third auction to offer oil and natural gas lease blocks for development was its most successful to date, with peak production from the 25 onshore fields expected to reach 77,000 boe/d and bring in $1.1 billion of investment over the next 25 years.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Utah has rescheduled its postponed November oil and natural gas lease sale for Feb.16, combining it with another sale already scheduled for that month.

PJM Interconnection’s annual capacity auction, the first to include the grid operator’s new capacity performance requirement, “attracted a strong response from capacity resources prepared to meet the new pay-for-performance standards,” PJM said Friday.

The PJM Interconnection’s annual capacity auction underway this week could result in natural gas-fired capacity exceeding 6 GW to make up for declining coal and nuclear supplies.