Branching

Fayetteville Shale pioneer Southwestern Energy Co. has been branching out to Appalachia’s Marcellus Shale; to New Brunswick, Canada; and to the Lower Smackover Brown Dense formation, an unconventional oil reservoir in southern Arkansas and northern Louisiana. Right now company executives are most enthusiastic about the latter, which Southwestern has been working on for more than two years.

Untapped unconventional gas plays still exist in pockets across North America, but domestic producers are branching out to test prospects in Europe, the Asian Pacific area, Africa and elsewhere to stake their claims in the next big shale plays.

French-based exploration/production company Total SA, just as many of its major global competitors in the traditional energy sector are doing, is branching out to the alternative energy space as a response to climate change policies pushing to shrink the world’s carbon footprint.

French-based exploration/production company Total SA, just as many of its major global competitors in the traditional energy sector are doing, is branching out to the alternative energy space as a response to climate change policies pushing to shrink the world’s carbon footprint.

Branching out into other markets while also beating its chief rival to the punch, the New York Mercantile Exchange said it was introducing six new soft commodity futures contracts on the Nymex ClearPort clearing and trading platform at 6 p.m. EST Wednesday for a Dec. 21 trade date. The exchange said it anticipates listing the contracts on Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s Globex electronic platform by the end of January 2007.