shale

During the past decade, hundreds of unconventional oil and gas projects have failed to deliver the value sought by shareholders.

Gulfport Energy is seeking to eliminate more than $1 billion in debt and to cancel or renegotiate firm transportation contracts that it said drove it to enter bankruptcy protection.

The two shale producers are calling it a “merger of equals” and will share management duties once the transaction closes. The combined company aims to become the fourth-largest producer of tight oil in the US.

The latest updates on the North American shale sector’s efforts to consolidate and restructure.

Shale producers proved they could pump out record volumes of oil by drilling horizontal wells and then fracturing them intensively. Now the industry needs to find buyers for many wells and acreage with hard-to-determine values.

The all-cash deal bucks a recent trend of international oil companies divesting of Canadian assets and adds 15,000 B/D of production to the buyer’s total.

A company built with a plan to quickly profit from the shale boom began a slow decline when oil prices sank to $50/bbl. Others could be following it to bankruptcy court this year.

Judgment day may finally have arrived for weak players in the shale business. Deloitte ranks nearly half of the companies as extraneous. What happens next?

The legacy service provider operates in every major shale basin in the US and Canada. In court filings, it says it will seek additional funding to sell its equipment and wind down operations.

Why stimulate horizontal wells one by one when they can be done two at a time? The largest pressure-pumping company in the business says it might even be possible to complete three wells at once.