East Resources is a privately-owned business with its primary activity focused on the Marcellus shale in the northeastern US. The company has some 650,000 net acres of highly contiguous, operated acreage in the Marcellus, and 1.05 million net acres of acreage overall.
The US company also has some 60mmscfe/d of production, predominantly in natural gas, with substantial medium-term growth potential.
Peter Voser, CEO of Shell, said: “We are enhancing our world-wide upstream portfolio for profitable growth, through exploration and focused acquisitions, and through divestment of non-core positions.
“These acreage additions form part of an on-going strategy, which also includes divestments, with an objective to grow and to upgrade the quality of Shell’s North America tight gas portfolio.”
In addition, as part of its on-going acreage build strategy, Shell has acquired approximately 250,000 net acres of mineral rights in the Eagle Ford shale play in 2010. These undeveloped acreage positions are in the liquids rich window of the Eagle Ford play.
Shell said that it will be the operator in this highly contiguous acreage, and will be able to integrate these new assets into its existing South Texas operations, where it has been active for many years.
All together in 2010, Shell has added some 1.3 million acres of North America tight gas acreage. The company estimates that these new positions have the potential to yield over 16 trillion cubic feet of gas equivalent of resources.
