Within

Devon Energy Corp. is selling Tuscaloosa Marine Shale (TMS) assets in Louisiana and Mississippi, offering about 297,000 net acres (nearly 95% undeveloped) within the unconventional oil play, and production of about 600 b/d, according to the offering by Scotia Waterous (USA) Inc.

A Pennsylvania driller has bought more than 56,000 acres of leasehold, hundreds of producing natural gas wells and nearly 200 miles of natural gas pipeline and other infrastructure in New York state from a subsidiary of Chesapeake Energy Corp. It said it plans to drill vertical wells on the acquisition acreage this year.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s (PHMSA) Office of Pipeline Safety (OPS) agrees with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) that pipeline wall thinning may have significantly contributed to the rupture on the Columbia Gas Transmission in West Virginia earlier this month.

The Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) will consider 35 applications for water withdrawals, most of them intended to support natural gas drilling, at its next meeting in mid-December.

A West Virginia city in the Marcellus Shale has enacted a 6% business and occupation (B&O) tax on natural gas companies operating within the city limits, reportedly to raise revenue to fix roads and bridges that could be damaged by drilling there.

Australia’s Amadeus Energy Ltd. plans to acquire Fort Worth, TX-based Lonestar Resources Inc. — a player in the Eagle Ford, Bakken and Barnett shales — via the purchase of Lonestar’s holding company, Ecofin Energy Resources Plc of the United Kingdom.

Baker Hughes Inc., the industry’s third-largest oilfield services provider, said Friday the slump in U.S. natural gas activity weighed heavily on its latest quarterly profits. However, the No. 1 oilfield services provider, Schlumberger Ltd., managed to avoid the carnage in North America’s onshore by accelerating activity overseas.

The government of Poland plans to issue draft rules covering shale gas extraction within a week, the next step to help the country take advantage of what may be vast quantities of natural gas, authorities said Tuesday.

Unconventional oil and gas drilling within the 13 plays tracked by NGI’s Shale Daily Unconventional Rig Count dropped by a combined 13 rigs, or 1%, from the previous week to 869 rigs for the week ending Sept. 28. While some of the plays reporting increases or declines in activity were to be expected, others came as a bit of a surprise.