Barnett Shale

XTO, others sued over injection wells in Arkansas

Fort Worth-based XTO Energy, Chesapeake Energy and Southwestern Energy are named in an Arkansas lawsuit by several landowners who accuse the companies of improperly using injection wells to dispose of oilfield wastes under their property. The suit says some of the landowners have mineral rights leases with the companies, but those don't include the right to inject fluids beneath their land. Only Southwestern Energy has responded to the complaint, and it said it has agreements allowing wastewater injection. The Associated Press report is here. The online Arkansas News has a story here.

-- Jim Fuquay

An overview of U.S. shale plays

Powell Shale Digest has a one-page summary of production and well data for nine major U.S. natural gas and crude oil shale regions. It shows nearly 36,000 wells, with total production of nearly 23 trillion cubic feet of gas and 682 million barrels of oil and condensate from the Barnett, Fayetteville, Eagle Ford shales, and multiple areas of the Haynesville, Bakken and Marcellus shales. The data is free and the link is here.

(Editor's note: An earlier version of this post used a figure of "nearly 40,000 wells" from the original Powell Shale Digest report. The authors of that report later corrected the number.)

-- Jim Fuquay