Haynesville Shale

EnLink Midstream Partners LP plans to pay about $600 million in cash and partnership units for Permian Basin gas gatherer and processor Coronado Midstream Holdings LLC, continuing an acquisition spree backed by a “…financial position which allows us to effectively expand in times like these,” EnLink CEO Barry Davis said Monday.

Dallas-based Matador Resources Co. would become the largest Delaware Basin acreage holder among small- and mid-cap public companies with the consummation of its recently announced deal to acquire Roswell, NM-based Harvey E. Yates Co. from HEYCO Energy Group Inc.

Prescient planning by some U.S. explorers should enable many of them to keep their heads above water this year, but if oil prices don’t rebound by 2016, liquidity issues will surface, according to Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services (S&P).

In response to weak commodity prices Australia’s BHP Billiton Ltd. is dialing back operations in U.S. shale plays, with plans to cut its operated rig count to 16 from 26 by the end of June, a nearly 40% reduction.

An unprecedented level of uncertainty exists for North America’s upstream sector this year, but upside exists for operators to trim service costs, high grade their portfolios and improve efficiencies, according to Wood Mackenzie Ltd.

Azure Midstream Energy LLC and Marlin Midstream Partners LP have agreed to transactions that would create one of the largest gathering and processing systems in the Haynesville Shale and horizontal Cotton Valley plays in East Texas and northern Louisiana.

Production from the nation’s seven most prolific shale and tight oil regions continues to surge ever higher and is expected to reach 45.44 Bcf/d of natural gas and 5.52 b/d of oil next month, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Shale oil helped pull Texas out of the 2008-2009 national recession more quickly than other parts of the country, but during the 2016-2017 biennium, revenue from oil and gas taxes will be making a smaller contribution to state coffers than during the current biennium, according to the comptroller’s latest estimates.

Texas oil and gas interests begin a new legislative session on Tuesday following a year that saw growing resistance to fracking in some corners of the state and heightened citizen awareness of drilling and pipelines. But industry efforts to assuage citizen concerns — not to mention much-weakened commodity prices — could give oil and gas a relatively easy time of it in Austin this time around.