Maintain

PDC Energy wells in the Codell formation of Colorado’s Wattenberg Field are outperforming those in the Niobrara, and the independent plans to drill as many Codell horizontal wells as Niobrara horizontals this year, company officials said during an analyst day conference in New York Thursday.

Calgary-based Talisman Energy Inc. last year cut debt by $750 million, stabilized its balance sheet and is now focused on two core areas: the Americas and the Asia-Pacific region, said CEO Hal Kvisle.

Energy analysts and the market weighed in Wednesday on the news that natural gas pioneer and industry cheerleader Aubrey K. McClendon, co-founder, CEO and president of Chesapeake Energy Corp., is retiring effective April 1. His departure would end one point of controversy, but it won’t solve the problems facing the producer, according to some.

Continental Resources Inc., now the king of the Bakken Shale, has expanded its empire to an estimated 1.1 million net acres after completing a deal to buy 119,218 million acres for $649.3 million in cash. The Samson Resources Co. properties in North Dakota, primarily in Williams and Divide counties, have current production estimated at about 6,500 boe/d, 82% weighted to crude oil.

NFR Energy LLC has closed two private deals worth a combined $736 million to acquire assets in the Anadarko Basin and Eagle Ford Shale. The company also announced that First Reserve Corp. has increased its interest in the parent company, NFR Holdings LLC, to 99.7% and NFR is to be renamed Sabine Oil & Gas LLC.

Two and a half million gallons sounds like a lot of water, and producers can use that much and more to stimulate a well with hydraulic fracturing (fracking), but other uses consume a lot more, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson told an audience on the Council on Foreign Relations Wednesday.

Marketed natural gas production of the top-five producing states — Texas, Louisiana, Wyoming, Oklahoma and Colorado — grew 7.5% last year, but their combined share of U.S. gas output fell slightly to about 65%, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The Department of Defense (DOD) has signed off on Bluewater Gas Storage LLC’s proposal to construct and operate a 300 MMcf/d pipeline to maintain the U.S. leg of a connection between its facilities in St. Clair County, MI, and an existing pipeline in St. Clair Township, Ontario.

While 10% of its 2012 capital program will be spent to maintain dry natural gas activities — in anticipation of better days — EOG Resources Inc.’s focus is on oil and liquids, as it has been for about the last four years, CEO Mark G. Papa told financial analysts Friday during an earnings conference call when he waxed ecstatic about the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas.