E&P

Activist fund Relational Investors LLC, helmed by former T. Boone Pickens lieutenants, is becoming the biggest shareholder in Magnum Hunter Resources Inc. (MHR) with a 15% stake after investing $150 million.

Taking a page from other resource-rich states, Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead said Friday that he is seeking initiatives to “add value to Wyoming’s natural resources and create jobs.” The effort will seek to attract industry to the sparsely populated, but natural resource-endowed state.

North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple told a record crowd of nearly 4,200 participants at the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference Wednesday that the past days of relatively light regulation of the oil and gas industry in his state are over.

In an industry in which low-cost feedstock is key, North Dakota’s wealth of natural gas liquids (NGL) makes the state a natural candidate for the development of downstream opportunities in the chemicals industry and all of its offshoots, a researcher/consultant said Wednesday at the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference in Bismarck, ND. Ultimately, the model is to do what Alberta, Canada did two decades ago and bring in global partners already in the chemical business.

Sundance Energy Australia Ltd. is picking up Texas acreage prospective for the Eagle Ford Shale and for the Georgetown Formation and has sold its acreage in the Denver-Julesburg (DJ) Basin in order to refocus capital on core areas, the company said.

Three people are missing after a pair of mudslides in western Colorado on Sunday, which also affected a natural gas well pad, presumed to be operated by Occidental Petroleum Corp. (Oxy), and several other nonproducing gas wells.

Global strategic positioning of the United States is going to be driven by the development of domestic shale plays, petroleum analyst/consultant Tom Petrie said Thursday at the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference in a talk centered on “The Geopolitics of Shale Oil.”

CEOs from three major Bakken formation producers on Thursday predicted that North Dakota’s rapid oil/natural gas production growth is just getting started, pointing toward 2 million b/d levels in the next few years and recovery rates in future wells approaching 40%.

Permian pure-play operator Parsley Energy Inc. caught the market’s attention Friday after launching an initial public offering (IPO) in which it sold about six million more shares than anticipated, exceeding its offering price and sending the stock soaring in its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).