Maverick Oil & Gas Sets Sights on Midcontinent Gas Reserves, NGI Reports

Maverick Oil & Gas has set its sights on the Midcontinent — that’s where the future of natural gas is, CEO V. Ray Harlow said in an interview with Natural Gas Intelligence (NGI) this week.

Harlow, with 34 years in the oil and gas business, joined Maverick last year, and he now is leading the junior independent on a quest for unconventional reserves in the heart of the United States. Headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, FL with offices in Dallas, the independent holds assets in some of the biggest gas finds in the country, including the Piceance Basin of Colorado, the Barnett Shale in North Texas and the Fayetteville Shale in Arkansas.

“We redirected the company’s development efforts last year and acquired some property in Arkansas,” said Harlow, 54. “We took the company from more of a traditional E&P focus to more of a resource-based focus to projects in the Barnett Shale and the Fayetteville Shale. The potential in those projects is far and away much higher. Now we are a shale player.”

Most of the domestic E&P players compete in the Rocky Mountains, Harlow noted. But “if you look at the reserve distribution in the United States through the end of 2005…, the Rocky Mountains contain probably just over 50% of the unconventional gas reserves in the country. The rest lies to the east of there. The hot new plays are in the Midcontinent: Fayetteville, Arkoma, Woodford, Anadarko, Mississippi, Barnett.”

The tight gas plays “combine low-risk exploration with high potential productivity,” Harlow said. “This fits our risk profile quite well. We like the lower risk, lower cost aspect of it.” Maverick acquired its Fayetteville acreage in September, and it spudded the first well in February. It now has commitments to acquire more than 160,000 gross acres in the play, which it would operate with a 45% stake.

Harlow will join executives from Anadarko Petroleum Corp., Lukens Energy Group, Suez LNG NA, and W&T Offshore Inc. in a panel discussion about the growing gas supplies in newly developing areas at NGI’s 20th Anniversary GasMart 2006, which will be held May 3-5 in Denver.

Featured speakers at the 20th annual GasMart conference and trade show, hosted by Intelligence Press Inc., include: Chairman Joseph Kelliher of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Questar Chairman Keith Rattie, Kinder Morgan Natural Gas Pipelines President Scott Parker and veteran Houston analyst John Olson. Other sessions will focus on Rockies supplies, risk management, end user strategies, and the politics of it all.

Sponsors include the IntercontinentalExchange (ICE), the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), the Natural Gas Exchange (NGX) and North American Energy Credit and Clearing (NECC). For more information, to see a list of attendees or register, visit http://gasmart.com, Call 800-427-5747 or email gasmart@gasmart.com.

GasMart is the premiere conference and trade show and a major networking event for natural gas producers, pipelines, end users, utilities and marketers. More than 25,000 have attended GasMart events since 1987. More than 500 industry representatives are expected to descend on Denver for GasMart this year.

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Intelligence Press Inc. is an independent publishing company and has been serving the energy industry since 1981 with leading news and price survey reports for the natural gas market in its publications: Natural Gas Intelligence, Daily Gas Price Index, Weekly Gas Price Index and Power Market Today.

The publisher runs real-time news on natural gas and power market developments at http://intelligencepress.com. Additionally, Intelligence Press, commonly identified by its flagship weekly newsletter, Natural Gas Intelligence or NGI, provides historical price data and publishes natural gas infrastructure and storage maps. NGI also hosts GasMart, www.gasmart.com, now in its 20th year — for the natural gas industry.