League

Nexen Inc. has more than doubled its shale leasehold in the Horn River Basin of British Columbia, moving into a league with the biggest players in the prospective natural gas play, the company reported last week.

The oil and gas industry generates more than $7.1 billion a year for Pennsylvania, according to an economic impact study performed by the Pennsylvania Economy League of Southwestern Pennsylvania (PELSP). According to the study — requested by the Marcellus Shale Committee, an organization of oil and gas companies engaged in developing the Marcellus Shale — Pennsylvania’s economy benefits from the direct employment, compensation and output of the industry as well as from the impacts of the industry’s supply and distribution chain. For each of the 26,500 full- and part-time jobs the industry provides, another 1.52 jobs are generated, according to the study. The number of new oil and gas wells drilled in Pennsylvania was 4,148 in 2007, more than triple the 2000 total of 1,354, an increase the PELSP said translates into estimated spending of $1.2 billion on new drilling activity. The study found that approximately 2,000 companies operated a 79,000 active wells in Pennsylvania in 2007, with more than 200 companies each operating 100 wells or more.