Combined

A recently combined and publicly held exploration and development company, Salt Lake City-based Richfield Oil and Gas Co., announced a purchase in the Graham Reservoir oilfield in Uinta County, WY. Richfield bought a shut-in well in the Wasatch National Forest (Well #16-15) from Frontier Energy for $610,000, including 640 acres of mineral leases. The company said the purchase gives it 100% working interest in a mineral lease in the Graham Reservoir, located approximately 120 miles northeast of Salt Lake City in southeastern Wyoming. The well has been shut in since 2003 and was completed in the Dakota Formation at 15,600 feet. Flow testing and production operations will get underway later in the first quarter. For Richfield, which is the product of the merger of Hewitt Petroleum Inc. and Freedom Oil & Gas Inc. in 2011, the acquisition is part of the process of “methodically building our reserve and production base” through graded acquisitions,” said CEO Douglas Hewitt.

Abraxas Petroleum Corp. said a recent Eagle Ford Shale well has been performing better than expected, but its operations in the Williston Basin in North Dakota have been hampered by equipment troubles.

Encana Corp. on Thursday struck a C$2.18 billion joint venture (JV) agreement to explore and develop close to half a million acres of its leasehold in the Duvernay Shale with a subsidiary of PetroChina International Ltd.

Denbury Resources Inc. said Monday that it has completed the first phase of its sale of 196,000 net acres in the Bakken Shale to ExxonMobil Corp. for $1.6 billion in cash and ExxonMobil’s operating interests in Webster Field in Texas, Hartzog Draw Field in Wyoming and an interest in the Carbon Dioxide (CO2) reserves in ExxonMobil’s LaBarge Field in Wyoming.

Onshore unconventional powerhouse Devon Energy Corp. plans to spend “significantly less” on exploration in 2013, but exploration activity still will remain at 2012 levels, CEO John Richels said Wednesday.

Unconventional oil and gas drilling within the 13 plays tracked by NGI’s Shale Daily Unconventional Rig Count dropped by a combined 13 rigs, or 1%, from the previous week to 869 rigs for the week ending Sept. 28. While some of the plays reporting increases or declines in activity were to be expected, others came as a bit of a surprise.

Combined heat and power (CHP), or cogeneration, is advocated for a dozen states heavily dependent on coal-fired power generation as a way to ease off of coal and address global climate change. CHP often relies on natural gas as its fuel source, although biomass, biogas and other fossil fuels also can be used. A report by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy predicts that in the next two decades there will be “substantial changes” in the way electricity is produced, and CHP is one of the tools for making the transition smoother and less carbon-intensive. “Energy efficiency, and CHP, in particular, represent significant near-term opportunities to make highly cost-effective investments in new energy resources,” said Anna Chittum, author of the report, “Coal Retirements and the CHP Investment Opportunity.” The report urges states to encourage their utilities to invest more in CHP as a means of meeting future demand.

The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) has received requests from citizens, oil and gas companies and local officials to review the drilling ordinances of three of the five localities in southwestern Pennsylvania that have filed a legal challenge to Act 13, the state’s omnibus Marcellus Shale law.

An “extremely” warm summer, combined with coal-to-gas switching, has created an “unprecedented” Bcf/day swing in the year/year natural gas supply/demand balance, which should lead to higher prices through the second half of the year, according to energy analysts with Raymond James & Associates Inc.