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Oil And Politics: Beijing plays the debt card as the Obama administration quietly lets China acquire major ownership interests in oil and natural gas resources across the U.S. at the same time it blocks the Keystone pipeline. Normally, foreign investment in the U.S. is to be welcomed. It creates jobs, boosts economic growth and promotes trade and exports. But when that investor is an ambitious and increasingly belligerent China to whom we owe over a trillion dollars, eyebrows and concerns need to be raised. Reversing a Bush administration policy, the Obama administration is encouraging Beijing to acquire equity interests in...

Chesapeake Energy Corporation said Sunday it had filed for bankruptcy amid a drop in oil and gas demand and prices due to the coronavirus pandemic. Chesapeake Energy said in a release it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and will continue to operate throughout its restructuring process. The Oklahoma City-based company said it secured a $925 million debtor-in-possession financing from certain lenders under Chesapeake’s revolving credit facility, which will be available upon court approval. The company and certain lenders under its revolving credit facility also agreed to the principal terms of a $2.5 billion exit financing, consisting of a new $1.75...

Chesapeake chasing ‘all-but-forgotten’ shale assets Posted on May 19, 2014 at 11:50 pm by Collin Eaton in Crude oil, Natural gas, Shale EmailPrint8 inShare81 A Chesapeake Energy storage tank near Dilley, Texas. (Pat Sullivan/AP) HOUSTON – Just a month after BP decided to take a $521 million hit to abandon its plans for the Utica Shale, Chesapeake Energy last week called the region its “newest world-class asset.”It was the second surprising determination that Chesapeake executives made this year on where the company could find its biggest future growth drivers. The first out-of-the-blue call came in February, when the Oklahoma City-based...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - About six years ago, an army of agents hired by energy companies started desperately courting landowners across the United States whose farms and ranches happened to sit atop some of the richest oil and gas deposits in the world. And so began one of the biggest land grabs in recent memory. Those days are over. U.S. energy titan Chesapeake Energy is quickly cutting back on an aggressive land-leasing program that in recent years has made it one of America's largest leaseholders, putting an end to half a decade of frenzied energy wildcatting. Beset by growing governance...

Natural gas may be plentiful, cheap and inviting at the moment. But the fracking process to get it still fans the flames of environmental policy clashes.At the Wall Street Journal’s ECO:nomics conference outside Santa Barbara, Calif., drillers and environmentalists debated over whether fracking posed a danger to the communities they serve. Drillers said that the amount of natural gas available –4,000 trillion cubic feet — can’t be ignored.“There is so much there, which is shown by what prices are,” said Edward Cohen, chief executive of Atlas Energy .But Paul Gallay, president of the environmental group Riverkeeper, challenged Cohen and Aubrey...

HOUSTON — State-owned Chinese energy giant CNOOC is buying a multibillion-dollar stake in 600,000 acres of South Texas oil and gas fields, potentially testing the political waters for further expansion into U.S. energy reserves. With the announcement Monday that it would pay up to $2.2 billion for a one-third stake in Chesapeake Energy assets, CNOOC lays claim to a share of properties that eventually could produce up to half a million barrels a day of oil equivalent.

South Texas region draws third big investment in a weekNEW YORK (MarketWatch) — China National Offshore Oil Corp. and Norway’s Statoil ASA announced separate deals, both valued at more than $2 billion, to develop the Eagle Ford shale in south Texas. Statoil said Monday it would team up with Canada-based Talisman Energy Inc. to buy acreage in the Eagle Ford shale. Statoil and Talisman formed a joint venture to purchase assets from Enduring Resources LLC for $1.33 billion. Statoil will also pay $180 million for additional acreage. Statoil’s share of the two transactions will cost $843 million. Late Sunday, Cnooc...