Lease

Cabot Oil & Gas has struck an agreement with a U.S. unit of Osaka Gas Co. Ltd. for the sale of a 35% nonoperated working interest in the Pearsall Shale in 50,000 net acres leased by the company in Atascosa, Frio, La Salle and Zavala counties in Texas for $250 million.

A Canadian family doctors’ association has called for the government of New Brunswick to enact a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing (fracking), while researchers with the University of New Brunswick (UNB) are urging Fredericton to proceed with caution.

A top energy analyst and some shareholders on Friday called for Chesapeake Energy Corp. CEO Aubrey McClendon and members of the board of directors to step aside following disclosures of questionable personal financial transactions by McClendon.

A pair of votes Tuesday highlighted the struggle Pennsylvania’s local governments are having with a new regulatory package of shale development.

It’s early days in Chevron Corp.’s shale natural gas and oil program, but it is “an area of significant long-term growth” with opportunities in the United States, Canada, Argentina, China and Europe — in liquids and dry gas — an executive said during the company’s analyst day Tuesday.

Proceeds from a natural gas and oil lease sale in New Mexico in February totaled almost $12 million and covered more than 7,000 acres, the New Mexico State Land Office reported Tuesday.

The governing board of the Port of Brownsville, TX, has approved a lease option for 500 acres of port property for the potential development of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) liquefaction and export facility by Gulf Coast LNG Export LLC.

The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) has withdrawn more than 3,300 acres of public land in southeast Ohio from a federal oil and natural gas lease sale scheduled for Dec. 7, pending a study on the possible effects hydraulic fracturing (fracking) could have on the state’s only national forest.

ExxonMobil subsidiary XTO Energy Inc. was the big spender in the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) quarterly oil and gas lease sale in Salt Lake City Tuesday, bidding $38.8 million for four parcels covering 3,982 acres in the Uinta Basin in Carbon County, UT. The BLM received bonus bids totaling $49.4 million for 8,271 acres in 11 of the 13 offered parcels. The other major bidder was Bill Barrett Corp., which won two parcels covering 1,773 acres, also in Carbon County, with bonus bids totaling nearly $10 million. The producer submitted the highest total bid per acre: $12,100 on parcel No. 20 containing 811 acres.