Lease

The Sierra Club alleges in a letter to the National Park Service (NPS) that Pennsylvania is violating federal law by allowing natural gas drilling on protected state park and forest land.

Bayer AG continues to discuss the lease or sale of acreage it owns in West Virginia for potential locations for ethane crackers, but at least one company has dropped out of those talks. “An affiliate of ours had been looking at a project in that area for an ethylene facility, but they are no longer doing that,” a spokesman for Houston-based PetroLogistics told NGI’s Shale Daily. In December, Bayer said a trio of sites it owns in industrial parks in New Martinsville, Institute and South Charleston, WV, totaling about 1,480 acres were available and would be ideal locations for thermal crackers (see Shale Daily, Dec. 23, 2010). Bayer wouldn’t discuss “speculation or market rumors” about possible deals, but has been in “serious discussions with several interested companies” that are looking at the West Virginia properties, Bayer spokesman Bryan Iams told NGI’s Shale Daily.

Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. saw profits shrink but production rise in the first quarter compared to the year-ago period, the result of low natural gas prices combined with expansion of operations in the Marcellus and Eagle Ford shales.

The latest monthly lease sale held by Louisiana’s Mineral and Energy Board last Wednesday garnered more than $500,000 in bonuses, which brought the total collected for fiscal 2010-2011 to more than $24.3 million.

Companies that missed out on the first round of leasing in the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas that began in 2008 will have another chance as some of those leases will be expiring in the coming months, an industry analyst said recently.

NiSource Gas Transmission & Storage unit Columbia Gas Transmission is seeking to sell or lease the Greenwood and North Greenwood storage fields in Steuben County, NY. The fields consist of approximately 6,700 acres, including nine storage wells, approximately three miles of storage pipeline and a 1,000 hp compressor station. Of the nine storage wells, four have active injection and withdrawal capabilities and one is an underground injection control injection well. Interested parties may send inquires to dataroom@nisource.com. A data room will be accessible Oct. 1-31. All bids are due by Nov. 1. The process is nonbinding and NiSource reserves the right to take no action.

British Columbia (BC) collected more than C$98 million in bonus bids in this month’s natural gas and oil lease sale, officials said Thursday. For the year the province said bids have totaled C$760 million.

The Louisiana Mineral and Energy Board’s monthly lease sale in August collected more than $3.7 million in bonuses, bringing the fiscal year total to more than $8.3 million.

Dominion natural gas transmission and storage subsidiary Dominion Transmission has struck a 10-year lease agreement with Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. for firm capacity in support of a project to move Marcellus Shale gas.