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Exco Resources Inc. is paying Chesapeake Energy Corp. $1 billion for something wet and something dry: about 55,000 acres in the liquids-rich Eagle Ford Shale of Texas and about 9,600 acres in the drier Haynesville Shale in North Louisiana.

BP plc’s Alaska presence will become more visible over the next five years as the oil major pours an additional $1 billion into natural gas and oil development on the North Slope with a to-do list that includes more drilling rigs and more workers.

Maintenance work on two platforms in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) and on a project shutting in some crude oil in Alaska may halt temporarily the growth in U.S. crude oil supplies, but onshore volumes should help alleviate the shortfall, according to energy analytics provider Genscape Inc.

BP plc’s Alaska presence will become more visible over the next five years as the oil major pours an additional $1 billion into natural gas and oil development on the North Slope with a to-do list that includes adding more drilling rigs and more workers, the operator said Monday.

In the wake of a New York appellate court ruling that two local bans on oil and gas activities should be upheld, supporters of shale development in the Empire State worry that the damage may be done, regardless of how the bans fare through a possible appeal.

The U.S. onshore rig count currently is “trendless,” but there’s hope for some direction in first quarter reports by three of the top domestic oilfield services providers, Schlumberger Ltd., Baker Hughes Inc. and Halliburton Co., according to Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Inc. (TPH).

One of the 10 largest U.S. natural gas producers, Tulsa, OK-based WPX Energy Inc., said Monday that its Niobrara formation discovery well in the Piceance Basin of western Colorado has exceeded 1 Bcf of production in a little more than 100 days of operation.

Federal officials have given a green light for a project in eastern Utah to drill an exploratory well in the Harley Dome natural gas field to capture helium, which, if the operation proves successful, could result in a helping to build supplies of the scarce gas.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett is looking for a new secretary to lead the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), but in a strange twist the outgoing secretary, Michael Krancer, is reportedly on a short list of names to replace a state Supreme Court justice who resigned Monday after being convicted on corruption charges.