Florida Condo Developer Buys 500 Acres of Marcellus/Utica Leases
A deal to sell Wroblewski Oil and Gas, a small exploration and production and frac sand company headquartered in western PA, was announced last week. Wroblewski owns leases on 500 acres of Marcellus/Utica Shale leases–about enough to drill one well. The interesting thing, for MDN, is who is doing the buying: American Leisure Holdings, Inc. American Leisure, according to what we can find, develops vacation real estate properties (condos and such) in Florida. So what in the world are they doing buying a small Marcellus E&P company?…
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That was fast. Last week MDN told you the scuttlebutt that the second largest oilfield services company in the U.S., Halliburton, was “in talks” to buy the third largest oilfield services company in the U.S., Baker Hughes (see 
The biggest news to hit the oil and gas industry in recent memory happened yesterday. The financial press lit up (and ran HUNDREDS of stories) about the leak/announcement/news that oilfield services company Halliburton is “in talks” to buy out rival Baker Hughes. The largest oilfield services company in the U.S. (and in the world) is Schlumberger, followed by Halliburton (again, in both the world and in the U.S.). Baker Hughes (BH) is the fifth largest oilfield services company in the world, but #3 in the U.S. Halliburton’s market capitalization this morning–price per share times outstanding number of shares–is $47.65 billion. Baker Hughes’ market cap is $26.59 billion, up $5 billion since yesterday afternoon when the news broke. Combined, the two companies would be worth $74.24 billion and employ (if there are no layoffs) 144,000 people. Schlumberger’s market cap, by comparison, is $127.62 billion with 126,000 employees. Both Halliburton and BH are heavily involved in providing all sorts of services (rigs, fracking, logistics, etc.) for exploration & production companies in both the Marcellus and Utica, as well as every other major shale play in the U.S. AND in every conventional play around the world…
MDN told you last October that evil corporate raider Carl Icahn had begun to sink his claws into his next shale victim. Like he had done at Chesapeake Energy, Icahn started snapping up stock in Canadian company Talisman Energy (see