Oil and Gas Investor Magazine - September 2011

Next Steps In Shale M&A

As a consolidation theme spreads though maturing shale plays, the question arises: is shale ownership a limited-window opportunity?

A Capital Trio

Three fundraisers offer insight on how to get deals done in the current financing environment.

Due Diligence In A&D

Risks in the oil patch can be considerable and cures elusive. A vigorous due diligence program can help buyers and sellers identify and minimize risk.

Dynamic Hedging Strategies

Hedging is a significant way to reduce risk, but passive hedging carries its own risks. Here's how more active management can benefit producers who hedge.

Euro Capital

Europe-based financiers talk unconventional resources, M&A, monetizing gas and successful business models.

Quiet Before The A&D Storm?

Plenty of available capital is driving buyer demand for scarce assets, especially for conventional plays.

The New Indies

ConocoPhillips plans to spin off its downstream business, joining Marathon Oil Corp. and others as pure-play E&Ps.

The New Marathon

Under Clarence Cazalot, Marathon Oil joins the ranks of the pure-play independents with worldwide opportunities in shales, LNG and conventional oil.

Sidebar: Majors Owning Shales: Drilling Through The Cycle

Sidebar: Shale Consolidation And A Private-Equity

Brown Dense

From one rock sample, a new U.S. horizontal oil field may grow. Southwestern Energy Co. will attempt this fall to prove commercial oil production from the nearly century-old, Texas-to-Florida, conventional Upper Smackover play’s source rock—the unconventional Lower Smack-over’s Brown Dense.

Meet Jennifer Burton

Enhanced oil recovery doesn’t typically attract private-equity dollars, but Legado Resources LLC is an exception. Among the EOR specialists at the Woodlands, Texas-based company is Jennifer Burton, senior geologist.

Energy Lenders' Price Decks

According to Macquarie Tristone's most recent "Quarterly Energy Lender Price Survey" of 39 regional, national and international reserve-based lenders, price forecasts continue to be adjusted for second-quarter 2011 on continued price strengthening.

Company Briefs

SandRidge Energy Inc., Oklahoma City, (NYSE: SD) has entered a joint venture targeting the Mississippian play in Oklahoma and Kansas with an affiliate of South Korea-based investment firm Atinum Partners Co. Ltd. for $500 million.

The Prize: A Frac Date

At the Colorado Oil & Gas Association's annual Energy Epicenter, held in Denver in August, Halliburton chairman, president and chief executive David Lesar gave the luncheon audience a true-or-false test about unconventional resources.

Eagle Ford Garners Unanimous Praise

Oil is the engine driving unconventional explorers these days. In an investment forum at the Rocky Mountain Energy Epicenter 2011, put on in Denver in early August by the Colorado Oil & Gas Association, presenters talked about the oil-resource plays that are clicking on all cylinders.

Eastern U.S.

1. Continuing its Silurian drilling program, Crows Point Exploration Ltd. has scheduled a 1,300-ft. test.

Not To Worry

Normally, August is a languid month. With the mercury hitting 100H throughout much of the oil patch—and even up in Maine!—you’d think it would be easy to ignore oil and gas prices, the stock market, the Fed, and other financial matters. But no.

Gulf Coast

1. In Hawkville Field, Lewis Petroleum Properties Inc. completed a horizontal Eagle Ford producer.

International Highlights

According to OPEC's annual statistical bulletin, Venezuela's crude oil proven reserves surpassed those of Saudi Arabia in 2010.

Chatting With Fred C. Julander

Fred Julander has been tireless in advocating for natural gas—and he started doing it long before shale fever hit the headlines. The Denver independent has worked for years on behalf of his wildcatter E&P company, Julander Energy Co., which he founded in 1989; and on behalf of natural gas, especially in the Rocky Mountain states.

Midcontinent & Permian Basin

1. A horizontal Bone Spring completion in Eddy County, N.M., by Midland-based COG Operating LLC, has extended Gatuna Canyon Field eastward.

Newswell

The shift to the wet-gas window of shale plays and the pursuit of natural gas liquids will continue even if oil prices slump and/or an NGL production glut occurs, says a new report from Barclays Capital gas and power analysts Biliana Pehlivanova and Michael Zenker.

Crude Oil And Financial Instruments

In Hart Energy Research's 2Q2011 Oil Price Forecast, we reiterated our second-half 2011 outlook of $91 per barrel for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil.

Regional Spotlight: Alberta Bakken

Late Devonian, early Mississippian deposition in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) and Williston Basin was dominated by regionally extensive, organic rich black shales, silts and carbonates.

Western U.S.

1 In a non-producing region of the northwestern Montana Disturbed Belt 23, Anschutz Exploration Corp. has scheduled a 13,841-ft. horizontal wildcat.