Norwegian energy company Statoil said on Oct. 11 that it had formed a joint venture to with Canada's Talisman energy to acquire about 97,000 acres of a shale formation in Texas, a transaction worth $1.33 billion.
The purchase concerns the Eagle Ford shale gas field in southern Texas. It will give Statoil some 67,000 supplementary shale formation acres in the United States. Statoil said it had invested about $843 million in the Eagle Ford field, and forecasts it will deliver resources of approximately 550 million barrels of oil equivalent.
The Norwegian state-owned company already has about 660,000 acres in a zone called Marcellus, in the northeastern United States, where it invested in 2008.
Shale gas comes from deep reserves which were thought inaccessible until the advent of new, and more expensive, drilling methods. It represented only one percent of U.S. gas production in 2000 but now accounts for 20% and could go beyond 50% by 2030, according to a study by consultancy IHS Cera.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2010
