Strategic

SandRidge Energy Inc. was able to come to terms with a hedge fund that sought to revamp the company’s leadership, but some shareholders apparently think the changes don’t go far enough.

Authorities in Quebec have been monitoring environmental groups opposed to shale gas development in the province for the last two years on fears that their activities could become radicalized and violent, according to a report by La Presse, a French newspaper in Montreal.

With non-strategic assets sales behind it, The Woodlands, TX-based Newfield Exploration Co. is focusing on multiple oil and liquids-rich projects and is placing particular emphasis on drilling longer laterals.

With non-strategic assets sales behind it, The Woodlands, TX-based Newfield Exploration Co. is focusing on multiple oil and liquids-rich projects and is placing particular emphasis on drilling longer laterals.

Chemical industry executives are going after strategic acquisitions and new product development to lift growth in the coming year in the face of “escalating input costs, stiffer competition and a struggling global economy,” according to a survey by KPMG LLP.

ZaZa Energy Corp. and Hess Corp. have ended a joint venture (JV) agreement they made in 2010 for activities in the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas and the Paris Basin in France. ZaZa is taking over the Eagle Ford activities while Hess will hold the exploration licenses in France.

Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services (S&P) has cut the corporate credit rating of Fort Worth, TX-based FTS International Services LLC, one of the top five hydraulic fracturing (fracking) service providers in North America, because it said capacity additions and rising costs, combined with moderating demand and low natural gas prices, are pressuring margins in the fracture stimulation industry.

Chesapeake Energy Corp.’s board of directors Thursday said it was working with CEO Aubrey McClendon to end the Founder Well Participation Program (FWPP) in which the CEO has the contractual right to participate and invest up to a 2.5% working interest in every new well the company drills.

ExxonMobil Corp., which made strategic decisions in recent years to capture massive unconventional shale gas and tight oil resources in North America, is now seeing the continent undergoing a “historic energy transformation,” CEO Rex Tillerson said Friday.