A review of the South Texas drilling permits issued recently shows Oklahoma City’s Chesapeake Energy plans to move ahead with its oil exploration plans.
The company recently obtained two drilling permits for Burleson County with each of the wells to be drilled at a depth of 9,000 feet. Caldwell is the county seat.
The two permits were among 34 recently approved for a dozen companies by the Texas Railroad Commission. The San Antonio Business Journal reported British oil major BP PLC was at the top of the permit list, submitting 28 applications for new wells over a three week period. BP was the leading permit filer in the Eagle Ford Shale counties for the third consecutive week.
EOG Resources, the shale’s top oil producer submitted 16 applications over the same time in the 67-county Eagle Ford shale area.
Until last year, BP had never drilled a well in South Texas. That changed after the company spent $10.5 billion on BHP Group Ltd.’s acreage in Texas and Louisiana in 2018, including 194,000 acres in the Eagle Ford Shale producing an average of 90,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day from 1,400 drilling sites.
A company that’s been active in Oklahoma in recent weeks with well completions, Ovintiv Inc. has obtained at least 21 permits in recent weeks in the play.
Ovintiv Inc. is transferring a lease to itself that once was listed under its former name, Encana Corp. In January, Encana shareholders voted to move the company’s headquarters from Calgary to Denver and rebrand as Ovintiv. That includes this week’s filing to drill an 11,000 foot oil and gas well in the Austin Chalk in Karnes County. The location was originally permitted to Encana in 2018 but never produced, according to Railroad Commission records.
Source: San Antonio Business Journal