Reserve

In one of the highest-priced transactions to date in any U.S. shale play, Marathon Oil Corp. on Wednesday agreed to pay $3.5 billion, or as much as $25,000/acre, for 141,000 net acres in the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas.

Approximately 18 Tcf of undiscovered natural gas would be economically recoverable from the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPRA) at a market price of $8/Mcf or more, and the amount would soar to 32 Tcf if the market price were to increase to $10/Mcf or more, according to an assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Approximately 18 Tcf of undiscovered gas would be economically recoverable from the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPRA) at a market price of $8/Mcf or more, and the amount would soar to 32 Tcf if the market price were to increase to $10/Mcf or more, according to an assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Even with an energy industry “sea change” to renewables, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) remains reliant on natural gas and the industry’s current shale boom, General Manager Ron Nichols told NGI’s Shale Daily on Thursday.

Unconventional play-focused Range Resources Corp. charted record quarterly production in 4Q2010 with an average of 541 MMcfe/d, an 18% jump from the year-ago period and an 8% increase from the previous quarter, the company said.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) last week sharply revised downward its estimate of conventional, undiscovered oil within the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPRA) after “recent exploration drilling” revealed “gas occurrence rather than oil in much of NPRA.”

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) on Tuesday sharply revised downward its estimate of conventional, undiscovered oil within the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPRA) after “recent exploration drilling” revealed “gas occurrence rather than oil in much of NPRA.”

Quicksilver Resources Inc. late Thursday agreed to sell all of its interests in its midstream unit Quicksilver Gas Services to Crestwood Midstream Partners II, LLC, a portfolio company of First Reserve Corp. for $701 million in cash at closing plus up to $72 million in additional earn-out payments.

The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) said it will hold a lease sale for oil and natural gas parcels in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) next month.