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Atlas Resources Partners LP (ARP) has made a friendly deal to take over privately held Barnett Shale operator Titan Operating LLC for $184 million, giving the Philadelphia-based operator another big natural gas liquids (NGL) lift in the heart of Texas.

Several Chesapeake Energy Corp. subsidiaries, along with a privately owned oil and gas exploration company based in Ohio, have filed a counterclaim in federal district court as they look to fight a lawsuit by 17 landowners in western Pennsylvania over a leasing dispute.

Crosstex Energy LP will pay about $210 million to buy privately held pipeline services provider Clearfield Energy Inc., a deal that would significantly expand its crude oil and condensate services in the Utica Shale, the Dallas-based partnership said Tuesday.

Marathon Oil Corp. has agreed to sell nearly all of its natural gas properties in the state for an undisclosed sum to Hilcorp Alaska LLC, a unit of privately held Hilcorp Energy Co. The sale includes an estimated 17 million boe net of proved reserves in 10 fields in which Marathon holds interests in the Cook Inlet. Gas operations include the McArthur River, Ninilchik, Cannery Loop and Kenai Gas units, as well as Beaver Creek, which is an oil and gas development within the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. The sales package also includes natural gas storage and gas pipeline transmission systems. Last year Marathon’s Alaska net production averaged 93 MMcf/d of gas and 112 b/d of oil. The company also had about 12.5 Bcf in storage at the end of 2011. The transaction, with an effective date of Jan. 1, 2012, is set to be completed this fall. Not to be sold is Marathon’s onshore drilling rig, which is being marketed separately.

Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. LP (KKR) and affiliates have agreed to pay $306 million to acquire Barnett Shale and Arkoma Basin properties from WPX Energy.

Apache Corp. on Thursday disclosed “encouraging” results from an exploratory drilling program in the emerging Whittenburg Basin in the Texas Panhandle, where five of six initial vertical tests were completed as “oil producers” in the Canyon Wash interval.

A year-old, privately held California micro exploration and production (E&P) company founded by former senior executives from a predecessor Chevron Corp. company (Texaco), Pacific Energy Development Corp. (PEDCO), plans to merge with publicly held Houston-based energy services firm Blast Energy Services to form a new publicly held company headed by PEDCO CEO Frank Ingriselli.

French producer Toreador Resources Corp. and ZaZa Energy LLC, a privately held oil and gas company based in Houston, have announced plans to merge in a cash and stock deal valued at approximately $294 million, creating a single company with significant shale holdings on two continents.

Blue Dolphin Energy Co. said it will purchase the Nixon Crude Processing Facility from a privately held firm in a stock deal, the value of which was not disclosed. The facility has a processing capacity of 15,000 b/d along with storage capacity of 295,000 b/d, and is located in the Eagle Ford Shale at Nixon, TX, on 56 acres between Gonzales and Wilson counties. The plant is in the final phase of a refurbishment project and plans to restart operations during 4Q2011.