williston

Magnum Hunter Resources Corp. brought online two new company-operated Eagle Ford Shale wells three days before Christmas. The wells’ best-ever results for the company in the Eagle Ford could have Magnum Hunter rethinking its idea of divesting Eagle Ford properties, said CEO Gary C. Evans.

Targa Resources Partners LP said Thursday it will acquire all of Saddle Butte Pipeline LLC’s ownership of its Williston Basin crude oil pipeline and terminal system as well as its natural gas gathering and processing operations for $950 million in cash.

For the second time this year, Newfield Exploration Co. raised its full-year production forecast based on rising output from key U.S. onshore oil and natural gas liquids (NGL) plays.

Oklahoma City-based GMX Resources Inc. has hired Global Hunter Securities to help it sell a portion of the company’s Cotton Valley Sand liquids-rich natural gas properties in East Texas. A transaction is expected during the third quarter, GMX said. The company’s natural gas resources are in the East Texas Basin, in the Haynesville/Bossier shale and the Cotton Valley Sand Formation, where the majority of its acreage is contiguous, with infrastructure in place and substantially all held by production, GMX said. In early 2011 GMX branched out from its Haynesville/Bossier properties and acquired about 67,724 net acres within the core horizontal oil development areas of the Bakken/Sanish-Three Forks Formation in the Williston Basin and the Niobrara Formation in the Denver-Julesburg Basin (see Shale Daily, Feb. 2, 2011).

North Dakota’s oil patch accounted for less than 1% of total U.S. crude oil production three years ago, but today the state is pumping close to 6% of total crude output, thanks to the formidable Bakken-Three Forks shale region, the state’s Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) is reporting.

Bison Pipeline LLC (Bison) has filed an application at FERC to build a major natural gas pipeline that would provide a new northbound route out of the Rocky Mountains to Midwest markets.

Encore Acquisition announced that it has completed the acquisition of oil and natural gas properties in the Williston Basin from subsidiaries of Anadarko Petroleum Corp. for $410 million.

Looking to bolster its position in the Williston Basin, Marathon Oil Corp. said Tuesday that it completed a series of land acquisitions totaling almost 200,000 leasehold acres in the Bakken Shale play in North Dakota and eastern Montana.