Never mind that hydraulic fracturing was once again linked to an earthquake, this time a 4.0 tremor in Ohio on New Year’s Eve, the year 2012 kicked off in impressive fashion for the shale industry, which has been revolutionized by the controversial drilling practice. Undaunted by the environmental and geological challenges, two oil giants signed [...]
BHP Billiton is acquiring shale specialist Petrohawk Energy Corporation in an all-cash tender offer valued at approximately US$12.1 billion and a total enterprise value of approximately US$15.1 billion, including the assumption of net debt. BHP made its first big splash in the unconventional hydrocarbons with a deal to buy Chesapeake Energy’s Arkansas-based gas business for [...]
A professor at The University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering said the risks incurred during hydraulic fracturing are low when compared to the risks of energy production from any other energy source and that some commonly believed notions about the gas extraction process are incorrect. While hydraulic fracturing has been used since [...]
If there’s a formula for success regarding the engineering aspects of unconventionals drilling, Encana Corporation looks well placed to know what that formula is. At Shale Gas Eastern Europe 2011 in Warsaw, Poland, Encana’s Mike Graham, Executive VP and President, Canadian division, offered insights from North America’s largest independent natural gas producer, whose head office [...]
Speaking on US shale gas development at Shale Gas Eastern Europe 2011 in Warsaw, Poland, Daniel G. Rathan, Director A&D at Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. remarked, “The growth in this sector of the industry is just incredible. The Barnett shale had production in the early 90s, but the explosion of production happened in 2006 [...]
Three years after the first successful well reached the 11,000-foot-deep Haynesville shale formation in northwest Louisiana, more than 1,060 wells using new horizontal drilling and “fracking” methods are producing natural gas at record levels. Their number could soon double. Another 930 wells are permitted and either awaiting drilling, being drilled or awaiting the complex hydraulic [...]
Shell is working to produce more natural gas and by 2012 our production will be more gas than oil, with production of gas trapped tightly in rock pores, known as tight gas, becoming a rapidly growing part of the picture. Tight gas is natural gas held in rock pores up to 20,000 times narrower than [...]
One shale gas driller emphasizes value of small-but-reliable shales Barnett, Marcellus or Haynesville are the names that often are associated with shale gas development in the United States. We’re not talking about any of the huge, gas-rich shales that slip off the tongue said Darcy Spady, Vice President and Managing Director of St. Brendan’s Exploration [...]
The Haynesville Shale, a sedimentary rock formation spanning parts of northwest Louisiana, southwest Arkansas and northeast Texas, could contain the largest natural gas deposit in U.S. history. New technology has made extracting natural gas from the shale commercially viable in recent years and created wealth opportunities in some of the state’s more impoverished parishes. And [...]
Chesapeake Energy Corp.’s Chief Executive Aubrey McClendon said Wednesday that most significant natural gas and oil shale fields in the U.S. have already been found, and that investors shouldn’t hold their breath for major new discoveries. “If you decided, I’m going to pass on the Barnett, pass on the Haynesville, pass on the Marcellus, and [...]
