Unlock

Production from North American shale plays will continue to keep natural gas prices from increasing significantly any time soon, Royal Dutch Shell plc CEO Peter Voser told financial analysts in London Thursday.

McMoRan Exploration Co. remains stymied in efforts to unlock production from the Davy Jones No. 1 well in the Gulf of Mexico’s shallow waters after operations designed to unblock perforations using a propellant stimulation gun had “limited success.” The New Orleans-based producer now plans to reperforate the well on South Marsh Island Block 230 with electric wireline using tubing guns. Davy Jones, which McMoRan operates, is part of an ultra-deep natural gas structure encompassing 20,000 acres on four blocks of the Outer Continental Shelf. In late November McMoRan said it still was struggling to bring the prospective No. 1 well online, which was supposed to be flowing 50 MMcf/d last summer (see Daily GPI, Nov. 28). McMoRan holds a 63.4% working interest with Energy XXI (15.8%); JX Nippon Oil Exploration (Gulf) Ltd. (12%); and Moncrief Offshore LLC (8.8%). In early December Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., whose top executives also run McMoRan, agreed to to buy the company, as well as Plains Exploration & Production Co., for $9 billion (see Daily GPI, Dec. 6).

An Ohio judge has ruled that landowners who signed oil and natural gas leases with Chesapeake Exploration LLC have the right to accept better offers from competitors, as long as the original lease is in the primary term, drilling hasn’t started and Chesapeake fails to match the offer.

BP plc has awarded the first contracts for Project 20K, a multi-year initiative to develop next-generation systems and tools to unlock the next frontier of deepwater oil and gas resources that currently are “beyond the reach of today’s technology.”

DCP Midstream LLC is in the process of doubling its natural gas processing capacity in the Denver-Julesburg (DJ) Basin by the end of 2014 as drilling and completion technologies unlock more gas, the company said.

Williams is seeing “a lot of demand for increased growth” in the Northeast and is ready “to take advantage” with a bevy of major infrastructure expansion projects, CEO Alan Armstrong told investors on Thursday.

The shale rocks that are reconfiguring the North American energy landscape eventually will be unearthed around the world, albeit at a much slower pace, but the economic impacts will be gigantic, an ExxonMobil Corp. executive said Tuesday.

New and continuously improving drilling technologies have handed producers the keys to unlock more onshore natural gas and oil reserves with fewer wells and at a lower cost, but today’s innovations have only scratched the rock’s surface, a Schlumberger Ltd. executive said recently.

New and continuously improving drilling technologies have handed producers the keys to unlock more onshore natural gas and oil reserves with fewer wells and at a lower cost, but today’s innovations have only scratched the rock’s surface, a Schlumberger Ltd. executive said recently.