Shales

Liquids-rich unconventional gas plays, particularly shales, are continuing to drive midstream spending as evidenced by two announcements last week out of the Eagle Ford Shale as well as the Cana-Woodford Shale and Granite Wash plays.

Domestic oil shales offer “vast development potential,” but without sustained high oil prices they may not be profitable, according to a report released Thursday by Boston-based Ceres, a coalition of investment, environmental and public interest groups.

Fort Worth, TX-based Quicksilver Resources Inc. — which makes a specialty of targeting unconventional reservoirs, including gas shales — said more than half of its capital budget for 2011 of $455 million will be spent in Texas.

Occidental Petroleum Corp. Friday said it is building its stakes in the Eagle Ford and Bakken shales in two transactions valued at about $3.2 billion.

There were more than 14,000 oil and gas field operators in the United States last year, but the largest 100 of them as determined by total operated reserves accounted for nearly 90% of proved oil and gas reserves and included shale giant Chesapeake Energy Corp. and other companies active in the nation’s shale plays, according to a U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) report.

Fort Worth, TX-based Quicksilver Resources Inc. — which makes a specialty of targeting unconventional reservoirs, including gas shales — said more than half of its capital budget for 2011 of $455 million will be spent in Texas.

Shale giant Chesapeake Energy Corp. “has one of the industry’s best collections of natural gas assets,” but “continuing concerns about the company’s profligate spending” and accounting methods led veteran analyst Philip H. Weiss of Argus Research to trim his recommendation to “sell” last week.

Encana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. and a drilling partner are packing up and moving operations out of two Pennsylvania counties after determining that the first natural gas wells drilled in Luzerne County, PA, “were unlikely to produce natural gas in commercial quantities.”

The North American shales have been good to Devon Energy Corp. as evidenced by the company’s strong 3Q2010 earnings revealed this week. The Oklahoma City-based exploration and production (E&P) company said it set new quarterly production records in both its Barnett and Cana-Woodford shale plays.