ExxonMobil to buy Bakken shale assets from Denbury Resources for $1.6 bn

ExxonMobil yesterday said that it will buy all the Bakken region shale assets in North Dakota and Montana held by Denbury Resources Inc, for $1.6 billion.

Under the deal, ExxonMobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, will acquire 196,000 acres in North Dakota and Montana and in exchange, Denbury will get $1.6 billion in cash and ExxonMobil's Hartzog Draw field in Wyoming and the Webster field in Texas.

Denbury said it has agreed in principle to either purchase an interest in the carbon dioxide reserves in Exxon Mobil's LaBarge Field in southwestern Wyoming or to purchase incremental carbon dioxide from that field.  The purchase would reduce the amount of cash received by Denbury.

The acquisition will increase ExxonMobil's US oil production by about 3 per cent and increase its acreage in the Bakken field by 50 per cent to nearly 600,000 acres, making it one of the biggest leaseholders in the Bakken along with Marathon Oil, EOG Resources, Hess Corp and Continental Resources.

The assets purchased are expected to produce 15,400 barrels of oil equivalent per day in the second half of the year, while the net production from the interests ExxonMobil is giving to Denbury is around 3,600 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

The Bakken shale acreage will be operated by ExxonMobil subsidiary XTO Energy, a leading US oil and natural gas producer that has the expertise in developing tight gas, shale gas, coal bed methane and unconventional oil resources.