Should

Continental Resources Inc., now the king of the Bakken Shale, has expanded its empire to an estimated 1.1 million net acres after completing a deal to buy 119,218 million acres for $649.3 million in cash. The Samson Resources Co. properties in North Dakota, primarily in Williams and Divide counties, have current production estimated at about 6,500 boe/d, 82% weighted to crude oil.

British Columbia (BC) over the next 24 years should gain more natural gas investment than any other Canadian province, according to the Conference Board of Canada.

U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) Wednesday said the United States should use its natural gas bounty to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) to NATO countries to help them reduce their reliance on natural gas supplied by Russia and Iran, thereby bolstering U.S. national security.

Noble Energy Inc. announced Thursday that it plans to spend $3.9 billion on capital expenditures (capex) in 2013, almost half of which will go toward drilling horizontal wells in the Niobrara-Denver Julesburg (DJ) Basin.

Mining giant Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. last week put a $9 billion cash-and-stock transaction — $20 billion total including debt — on the table to buy U.S. producers Plains Exploration & Production Co. (PXP) and McMoRan Exploration Co., a deal that is expected to vault Freeport into the upper ranks of domestic producers but initially with faltering shareholder support.

Range Resources Corp.’s planned five-rig drilling program for 2013 in the Mississippian Lime, which was scheduled to start up early next year, already is under way based on encouraging results from a crop of wells in the Nemaha Ridge area, the company said Thursday.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), the incoming chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, believes the nation should take a careful approach to exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG), and endorses sharing federal revenues to develop offshore oil and natural gas with coastal states.

Colorado stakeholders in an ongoing voluntary water testing program related to oil and natural gas extraction activity support a statewide mandatory program, they said earlier this month, two days after the state government held its first public hearing on a proposed baseline groundwater monitoring program.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), the incoming chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, believes the nation should take a careful approach to exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG), and endorses the sharing of federal revenues from the development of offshore oil and natural gas with coastal states.