Driller

Apache Corp. is said to be shopping some of its portfolio in the Gulf of Mexico, a region where it now reigns as the largest shallow water driller and where it has steadily been building an inventory of deepwater prospects.

Apache Corp. is said to be shopping some of its portfolio in the Gulf of Mexico, a region where it now reigns as the largest shallow water driller and where it has steadily been building an inventory of deepwater prospects.

A district court judge wants the highest court in West Virginia, the Supreme Court of Appeals, to certify whether existing state law allows a company to drill on land where it doesn’t own the surface rights, but it owns the underlying mineral rights.

An Ohio judge has upheld a class action lawsuit against a Utica Shale driller, a decision that could release hundreds of landowners from undeveloped oil and natural gas lease agreements.

U.S. onshore horizontal drilling has improved steadily across every category, in part because of improvements in technology, but the “human experience factor” appears to be playing a substantial role as well in moving well times and depth curves to the left, according to an analysis by Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. (TPH).

A Pennsylvania driller has bought more than 56,000 acres of leasehold, hundreds of producing natural gas wells and nearly 200 miles of natural gas pipeline and other infrastructure in New York state from a subsidiary of Chesapeake Energy Corp. It said it plans to drill vertical wells on the acquisition acreage this year.

In the midst of continued oil/natural gas production growth, albeit at a slower pace, North Dakota’s drilling activity has slowed significantly and the amount of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) even more so, according to the state’s top oil/gas official. Activity is projected to increase again next year, however, with continuing technology advances.

Houston-based land driller Sidewinder Drilling Inc. management on Monday said it now holds about 92% of the outstanding shares of Union Drilling Inc., which allows the unconventional oilfield service operators to move forward with their merger, first announced in September.

Chesapeake Energy Corp., the most prolific driller and the second largest natural gas producer in the United States, wrote down $2 billion in natural gas reserves in 3Q2012, which wiped out the equivalent of 4.9 Tcf of its reserves and triggered the company’s biggest net loss in three years.