Core

Devon Energy Corp. will drill more wells in North America’s onshore this year than it originally planned, with an eye on discovering another emerging play, company executives said Tuesday.

As a hard-core group of concerned consumers from the San Francisco Bay Area suburbs continues to allege health hazards from smart meters, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) last Thursday proposed a radio wave-free option for customers who are convinced that radio frequencies produced in the meters cause serious health problems. PG&E proposes to simply turn off the radios in the smart meters for customers requesting it.

GMX Resources Inc. (GMXR) said it has branched out from its Haynesville/Bossier natural gas-directed properties, collecting about 67,724 net acres within the core horizontal oil development areas of the Bakken/Sanish-Three Forks Formation in the Williston Basin and the Niobrara Formation in the Denver-Julesburg (DJ) Basin.

SM Energy Co. said it plans to spend $1.04 billion next year, $830 million of that on drilling, mostly in the Eagle Ford Shale and the Bakken/Three Forks in the Williston Basin. The company’s putting its money in “all the right places,” according to an analyst at Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Securities Inc.

Concho Resources Inc. said Thursday it is looking to divest “certain Permian Basin properties” because they are mostly not in the company’s core areas of operation and because they have a higher per-unit cost than Concho’s existing portfolio of assets.

Improving performance from its core Fayetteville Shale play more than offset low natural gas prices in 2009, Houston-based Southwestern Energy Co. reported Friday. Production, which is 100% natural gas, jumped by 54% last year to a record 300 Bcfe — and output from the Fayetteville play was up 81% to 243 Bcf.

Denver-based Bill Barrett Corp., whose fortunes are tied to the natural gas transportation system out of its core Rocky Mountain operations, is seeing “improving infrastructure” for both gas and liquids, COO Joe Jaggers told financial analysts last week.

Improving performance from its core Fayetteville Shale play more than offset low natural gas prices in 2009, Houston-based Southwestern Energy Co. reported Friday. Production, which is 100% natural gas, jumped by 54% last year to a record 300 Bcfe — and output from the Fayetteville play was up 81% to 243 Bcf.

Improving performance from its core Fayetteville Shale play more than offset low natural gas prices in 2009, Houston-based Southwestern Energy Co. reported Friday. Production, which is 100% natural gas, jumped by 54% last year to a record 300 Bcfe — and output from the Fayetteville play was up 81% to 243 Bcf.