As natural gas companies buy, trade and sell leases with one another, property owners often don’t know who might show up to inspect, survey or drill on their land. When renewal time arrives the property owner might be presented with a very different deal. More on the Post-Gazette.com website.
Jim Cramer preaches that the United States has enough resources to become energy independent and interviews T. Boone Pickens on energy independence topics.
More at CNBC Mad Money.
Consol Energy has agreed to sell half of its 663,350 acres of Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and West Virginia along with half of its existing wells to Noble Energy for $3.4 billion.
More in the Post-Gazette.com.
According to a report on FuelFix.com, Marathon Oil will acquire 141,000 net acres of Eagle Ford Shale holdings in Atascosa, Karnes, Gonzales and DeWitt counties, Texas for $3.5 billion.
An article in the Columbus Dispatch reports that the State of Ohio considers leasing state park lands for natural gas production from the Utica Shale. However, they only own the mineral rights to about 1/3 of the land and the mineral ownership for many more parcels is unknown.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission hopes to generate millions of dollars in revenue by expanding the natural gas leasing program on Pennsylvania Game Lands. More in the Wall Street Journal.
A post on the Seeking Alpha blog details how successful Chesapeake Energy has been at rapidly leasing enormous acreages in all of the major natural gas shale plays in the United States. They author calls them a “land acquisition machine”.
A letter published in The Ithaca Journal complains about the many foreign companies who have purchased major stakes in United States gas shale companies.
The Texas Army National Guard wants to buy 22,232 acres of land over the Eagle Ford Shale and owners of the land under consideration don’t want to sell because they want to keep the land for potential oil and gas royalties. More in the Houston Chronicle.
The American Right of Way Associates will hold an Eagle Ford Shale Training Class on Saturday, January 29th in San Antonio, Texas. The class is titled “Right of Way Acquisitions & Land Title Training Program”. It teaches the skills necessary for right of way agents and title agents to serve the various oil and gas companies working in the Eagle Ford Shale play. More at PR.com.
The Texas Railroad Commission’s Rule 37 is the subject of an editorial in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The author explains how this rule that regulates the spacing of oil and gas wells seems to be used to as a way to avoid dealing with Barnett Shale holdout landowners.
“If we go back in time to the days before drilling and mining, real estate transactions were fee simple transfers. However, once commercial mineral production became possible, the ways in which people own property became much more complex. Today, the leases, sales, gifts and bequests of the past have produced a landscape where multiple people or companies have a partial ownership of or rights to many real estate parcels.” Quoted from the Geology.com article.
Last year Chesapeake Energy paid out nearly $300 million in Barnett Shale royalties and this year plans to drill over 300 new wells.
A rock layer below the Marcellus Shale could prove to be another incredible source of natural gas. The Utica Shale is thicker, more geographically extensive and has already proven its ability to support commercial production.
