Mountain

Stone Energy Corp. said Friday it had completed the sale of substantially all of its Rocky Mountain properties to Newfield Exploration Co. in two separate transactions worth $577.9 million (see Daily GPI, May 15). Stone plans to keep a 35% proportional working stake in several undeveloped plays that are located on about 60,000 acres.

Stone Energy Corp. said Friday it had completed the sale of substantially all of its Rocky Mountain properties to Newfield Exploration Co. in two separate transactions worth $577.9 million (see NGI, May 21). Stone plans to keep a 35% proportional working stake in several undeveloped plays that are located on about 60,000 acres.

To finance its Rocky Mountain exploration and pay down debt, Newfield Exploration Co. has agreed to sell all of its natural gas-heavy properties in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) to McMoRan Exploration Co. for $1.1 billion. Newfield, which plans to keep its deepwater leases, said the sale was one of several divestitures planned over the next few months.

The $4 billion, 1,663-mile Rockies Express Pipeline (REX) that will transport Rocky Mountain natural gas to the Midwest and East will change market dynamics unlike any project before, said the head of Bentek Energy at GasMart 2007 Thursday.

The $4 billion, 1,663-mile Rockies Express Pipeline (REX) that will transport Rocky Mountain natural gas to the Midwest and East will change market dynamics unlike any project before, said the head of Bentek Energy at GasMart 2007 Thursday.

The rush to drill for oil and natural gas in five Rocky Mountain states is threatening endangered species and is locking out hunters and fisherman from western lands, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and National Wildlife Federation (NWF) said in a report last Wednesday. Their report further claimed that the amount of natural gas produced in the region has been “modest,” and not enough to justify “runaway drilling.”

The rush to drill for oil and natural gas in five Rocky Mountain states is threatening endangered species and is locking out hunters and fisherman from western lands, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and National Wildlife Federation (NWF) said in a report Wednesday. Their report further claimed that the amount of natural gas produced from the region has been “modest,” and not enough to justify “runaway drilling.”

Although continuing moderate weather almost everywhere outside the mountain areas of the West and bearish expectations of another subpar storage pull made it seem unlikely, the cash market achieved gains Wednesday at all but two points. One source could only speculate that there must have been some storage-futures spread purchases in play because he saw little serious heating load for Thursday except in parts of the West, Upper Plains and northern New England.

With producers drilling at a frantic pace in the Rocky Mountain region, natural gas production capacity there is on pace to nearly double between now and 2015, and Rockies gas alone will account for almost 25% of domestic production by then, according to a new study.