Haynesville Shale

Covey Park Gas LLC has agreed to pay $420 million in cash for substantially all of EP Energy Corp.’s property in the Haynesville and Bossier shales.

April is likely to be another in a series of sluggish natural gas and oil production months for the nation’s seven largest unconventional plays, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Private equity-backed Haymaker Resources LP has agreed to pay Chesapeake Energy Corp. $128 million for a bundle of mineral and royalty interests in 24 states and 324 counties.

Plenty of room is left to run in the neglected Haynesville Shale, where natural gas could be produced today at a breakeven of $1.50-3.00/MMBtu, enabling it to compete with Northeast output, a BTU Analytics review has found.

Total natural gas and oil production from the nation’s seven largest unconventional plays will continue to decline at least through next month, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said.

Comstock Resources Inc. said it has completed an acreage swap with an undisclosed operator, in an equal exchange where it traded away property in Texas for core acreage and drilling locations in the Haynesville Shale in Louisiana.

Sixteen land-based rigs left the U.S. pack, according to the latest tally by Baker Hughes Inc., offset by a gain of three offshore rigs to yield a net decline of 13 U.S. rigs.

The U.S. rig count dropped by a net of 34 units in the first Baker Hughes Inc. tally of 2016. Eighty-three rigs returned to the hunt in Canada, but this sort of stampede is typical for the new year/post-holiday period. Look for U.S. rigs to keep dropping in the months ahead under the weight of depressed commodity prices, analysts have been saying.

Houston-based Swift Energy Co., whose primary operations are in the Eagle Ford Shale and Louisiana, filed for voluntary bankruptcy protection in the waning hours of 2015, and has begun a restructuring process that includes turning over control of the company and selling assets.