Spudding

Halcon Resources Corp. said it has acquired more than 50,000 net acres of leasehold in an Eagle Ford Shale play in East Texas, and plans to eventually triple its presence and invest $100 million there this year.

Triangle Petroleum Corp. said it has acquired about 42,000 net acres prospective for the Bakken and Three Forks formations in the Williston Basin, bringing its total net acreage position in the Williston Basin to 72,000 net acres and bring its net operated acres to 51,000.

Denver-based Bill Barrett Corp. is spudding a well at its Yellow Jacket shale gas project, part of an emerging two-formation natural gas shale play in the Paradox Basin of Colorado and Utah. Barrett is targeting the Pennsylvanian Hovenweep shale and Gothic shale at depths of 5,500-7,500 feet above and below the Lower Ismay formation. Hovenweep covers 1,300 square miles in the basin; Gothic is about 1,850 square miles wide. Barrett holds operating stakes of 55-100% in 183,000 net undeveloped acres in the Yellow Jacket shale project. Barrett said it drilled three “science wells” in 2007, which confirmed “encouraging gas content and shale composition.” An underlying salt isolated by a hard layer of anhydrite was believed to be an effective frac barrier, but a frac job penetrated the salt, which plugged surface equipment, it said. Barrett has a 3-D seismic shoot under way to high-grade a location for a horizontal Gothic shale well later in 2008. The well is to have a 3,000-foot lateral and would be stimulated with smaller jobs to avoid the salt layer, the producer said.