Exploration

Upstream investor Ridgewood Energy Corp., which last year threw the dice with a big investment in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GOM), has put together another $1.1 billion in commitments to pour even more into offshore exploration.

Legal issues continue to dog BP plc, but the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) deepwater remains the biggest go-to spot for the oil major following one of its most successful exploration years in nearly a decade.

ConocoPhillips, the largest U.S. exploration and production (E&P) operator, plans to spend $16.7 billion for its operations in 2014, with more than half of the investments (55%) allocated to North America, and in particular, the Eagle Ford and Bakken shales, and the Permian Basin.

A U.S. arm of Royal Dutch Shell plc is throwing in the towel in the Kansas portion of the Mississippian Lime, selling off 45 producing wells and about 600,000 net lease acres.

A new frontier is opening for shale drilling and hydraulic fracturing on a sub-arctic landscape of forests, muskeg swamps and permafrost 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) north of the border between western Canada and the United States.

Apache Corp. late Thursday pulled off what many analysts had not thought probable, selling a one-third operational stake in strife-torn Egypt for $3.1 billion in cash to China’s Sinopec International Petroleum Exploration and Production Corp.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp. is setting the wheels in motion to accelerate U.S. onshore drilling following the $2.64 billion cash sale for part of its offshore Mozambique natural gas project.

U.S. oil and natural gas exploration and production companies added 31.2 Tcf of wet natural gas proved reserves and almost 3.8 billion bbl of crude oil and lease condensate proved reserves in 2011, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in a report issued Thursday.

Questar Corp.’s exploration and production subsidiary on Monday agreed to pay $106.4 million to bolt-on more natural gas wells to an existing leasehold in Wyoming.