Huge international companies are buying up all the hydrocarbon resources in North America. At least that's what it has looked like over the past few days. Total signed up with Chesapeake for a 25% interest in about 620M acres of Utica within a Cheapeake/EnerVest JV. Cost was $700MM plus a commitment to $1.6B of development (60%). Sinopec is ponying up $2.2B for an interest in 1.2MM of Devon's acreage in the Utica, Michigan Basin, the Mississippian, the Tuscaloosa marine shale and the Niobrara. Similar to Total, Sinopec will cover 70% of development costs - $1.6B by 2014. Finally PetroChina is buying the 40% of the MacKay River oil-sands prospect that it doesn't already own from Athabasca Oil Sands corp. Price is $680MM Canadian.
