Plays

Despite current low prices and decreased volatility that are making natural gas storage plays unattractive, Portland, OR-based NW Natural is sticking with its strategy for operating and expanding merchant storage facilities in the West.

Shale and other unconventional resource plays are getting their own information clearinghouse at the University at Buffalo (UB) College of Arts and Sciences geology department

A unit of Willbros Group Inc.’s oil and gas business has been awarded a contract by Energy Transfer Partners LP to construct a portion of the Red River Gathering Pipeline (RRG). Work is to include construction of 97 miles of 30-inch diameter pipeline from Ardmore, OK to Denton, TX. Construction is scheduled to begin in early April. The project is part of an agreement for Energy Transfer to provide gas gathering, processing and transportation services in the Woodford and Barnett shales for XTO Energy Inc., a subsidiary of ExxonMobil Corp. (see Shale Daily, Oct. 24, 2011). “The significant growth in the midstream market is driving additional opportunities for our strategy to offer comprehensive services to project developments in the liquid-rich drilling plays such as the Woodford shale,” said Willbros CEO Randy Harl.

Cheap natural gas, courtesy of shale plays, is bringing industry back to the United States, growing economies along the Gulf Coast, in the Northeast and elsewhere. But it has also made holding gas transportation capacity a more dicey prospect for end-users, and there is a risk that some of the energy industry’s risk management muscle could atrophy while on a diet of low prices and low volatility.

Cheap natural gas, courtesy of shale plays, is bringing industry back to the United States, growing economies along the Gulf Coast, in the Northeast and elsewhere. But it has also made holding gas transportation capacity a more dicey prospect for end-users, and there is a risk that some of the energy industry’s risk management muscle could atrophy while on a diet of low prices and low volatility.

While its investments with Chesapeake Energy Corp. in Barnett and Utica shale gas and oil plays have been widely publicized, Paris-based Total SA also is quietly investing in a major research and development (R&D) project looking at in-ground ways to develop oil shale, an unrealized dream of energy independence that the industry and some policymakers have flirted with for decades.

Joining the months-long trend in the industry of transitioning from dry natural gas targets to more liquids-rich plays due to market economics, Dallas-based Matador Resources Co. said recently its 2012 plans will target the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas while ramping down the development of its Haynesville Shale acreage in North Louisiana.

The challenges of developing oil and gas resources in unconventional plays and in the deepwater have raised the bar for geosciences and petroleum engineering professionals and heightened the importance of human resource (HR) management at exploration and production (E&P) companies, according to the latest survey from Schlumberger Business Consulting (SBC).

Statoil ASA plans to increase North American natural gas and oil production fivefold by 2020 through unconventional plays and in the Gulf of Mexico, CEO Helge Lund said at IHS CERAWeek 2012 in Houston. Lund was one of several top exploration chiefs to speak at the 31st annual week-long conference in Houston.