Woodford

Marathon Oil Corp.’s $5.2 billion capital, investment and exploration budget for 2013 is about 65% targeted toward liquids-rich areas, particularly the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas.

Cardinal Midstream LLC has brought a third cryogenic gas processing plant online in the Arkoma Woodford Shale, and it now has 220 MMcf/d of operated cryogenic processing capacity in the Oklahoma play. The new Tupelo Plant in Coal County, OK, is capable of processing 120 MMcf/d. Cardinal’s Coalgate Plant, an 80 MMcf/d facility, is adjacent to Tupelo, and the Atoka Plant in Atoka County, has a capacity of 20 MMcf/d. Cardinal Midstream President R. Mack Lawrence said the company was expanding its gathering system and “evaluating further processing capacity expansions given the level of drilling activity on dedicated acreage and the quality and production volume we’re seeing from the rich gas wells in the play.”

Much of the pipeline capacity into and out of the Perryville Hub in North Louisiana handles gas from the Haynesville/Bossier Shale in North Louisiana, as well as the Barnett, Fayetteville, Woodford and Eagle Ford shale plays. With gas demand from power generation growing up on the other side of the hub, and the potential for liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports from South Louisiana, Perryville pipeliners are streamlining trading operations.

Antero Resources has acquired from CONSOL Energy a 7% overriding royalty interest in approximately 115,647 net acres in the Marcellus Shale in southwestern Pennsylvania and north central West Virginia for $193 million, the companies said Monday. The deal closed Sept. 21 with an effective date of July 1, 2011.

The market for products and services to support companies plying shale gas basins in the United States will grow to about $50 billion annually in 2015 as development continues in the Marcellus, Haynesville, Fayetteville and other shale plays, according to a recent study.

Drilling in liquids-rich corners of the Marcellus Shale and Midcontinent region helped Range Resources Corp. post record production volumes in the first quarter of the year.

ONEOK Partners LP said it will spend $180 million to $240 million by the first half of 2012 for natural gas liquids (NGL) projects in the Cana-Woodford Shale and Granite Wash plays.

There were more than 14,000 oil and gas field operators in the United States last year, but the largest 100 of them as determined by total operated reserves accounted for nearly 90% of proved oil and gas reserves and included shale giant Chesapeake Energy Corp. and other companies active in the nation’s shale plays, according to a U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) report.

Shale giant Chesapeake Energy Corp. “has one of the industry’s best collections of natural gas assets,” but “continuing concerns about the company’s profligate spending” and accounting methods led veteran analyst Philip H. Weiss of Argus Research to trim his recommendation to “sell” last week.