Exploration • Drilling • Field Services
Fig. 1. Eagle Ford will now become part of Statoil’s existing onshore US operations, including shale gas drilling in Bradford County.
Photo: Helge Hansen, Statoil.
Investment in US shale gas rises to record levels
Interest in US shale gas reserves has prompted a flurry of mergers and acquisitions. Sean Ottewell reports.
El interés en el gas en arcillas estadounidense ha provocado una oleada de fusiones y adquisiciones. Informa Sean Ottewell.
Interesse an US- Schiefergasreserven führt zu hektischen Fusionen und Übernahmen. Ein Bericht von Sean Ottewell.
I
ndependent energy research firm Wood Mackenzie’s latest corporate analysis highlights that upstream merger and acquisition (M&A) expenditure in US shale gas totalled US$21b (€16b) during the first half of 2010. Tis is equivalent to one third of global upstream M&A spend during the same period. Te company says that key indicators suggest that this level of activity is set to continue over the next couple of years, too. Luke Parker, manager of Wood
Mackenzie’s M&A research service, underlines the magnitude of the market: “Trough the first half of this year alone, in excess of 35 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of shale gas resource changed hands at an average cost of US$0.60 (€0.45) per
million cubic feet of gas equivalent (mcfe). Tis expenditure is equal to the total US shale gas M&A expenditure for the 2008 and 2009 combined.
“M&A activity in US shale gas has
evolved with its emergence, play-by-play, as a world scale source of secure, long- term gas supply. Te key factor driving this has been the continued evolution and application of new technologies to unlock enormous volumes that were previously considered uncommercial.” Te result is lowered development
breakeven costs to a level at which the cost of shale gas is highly competitive with other domestic sources of supply – conventional and unconventional – and LNG imports. Operators have made, and continue to
www.engineerlive.com 9
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56