Antero Resources

From Wikimarcellus

Denver, Colorado-based Antero Resources is a privately-held, unconventional natural gas, exploration and production (E&P) company. It has been active in both tight sands and fractured shales exploration. As of March, 2011, the company controled or owned 169,000 net acres in the Marcellus shale primarily in northern West Virginia.

Antero was reported in September, 2008 as having purchased a one third working interest of the approximately 600,000 to 800,000 acres of Marcellus shale drilling rights owned by Dominion Resources. This acreage was mainly located in western Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

A further report in late September indicated that Antero's drilling rights had been scaled back to 114,259 acres due to financing issues. The deal with Dominion closed September 30, 2008. The latter retained a 7.5% royalty on all wells drilled on the acreage by Antero.

Antero was to be anchor tenant of Dominion's proposed Keystone Pipeline.

According to the company web site, as accessed in late June, 2009, Antero had recently drilled and completed two Marcellus Shale wells, and drilling was still underway on two others. All of these wells had been on its acreage in West Virginia. Initial gas sales were scheduled to begin in July. Antero planned to build its own gathering system and compression facilities for the West Virginia wells.

In early December, 2010, the company announced that it had acquired Bluestone Energy Partners, a privately held West Virginia natgas producer. The purchase included roughly 40,000 acres in the Marcellus shale in West Virginia (96%) and Pennsylvania (4%). There were 93 operated vertical wells and 3 horizontal ones on the property producing 19 Mmcf/d (gross) or 13 Mmcf/d (net) including non-operated production. 54% of the acreage was held by production. It also including gathering pipelines and compression facilities for the wells. The cost of purchase had been $93 million in cash and assumption of $25 million in subordinated debt.

In March, 2011 Antero was cited by WVDEP for a drilling mud spill into Indian Run Stream just north of the city of Salem, in Harrison County, WV. It is unknown whether this is the same site referred to on the Hall Drilling, LLC wiki page. Hall had been a drilling partner of recently acquired Bluestone Energy. The Salem site on Indian Run Stream was being drilled by contractor Bronco Drilling. The latter company had been compelled by WVDEP to file a Spill Prevention Plan and agreed to pay a $15,000 penalty. All work was ordered stopped by both companies until further notice.

By the end of March, 2011 Antero had 5 rigs operating in northern West Virginia and was producing from 34 horizontal wells. Two additional ones were still awaiting pipeline and facilities completion. At the time, its operating production amounted to 128 Mmcf/d gross or 90 Mmcf/d net. Nine additional horizontal wells were either completing or awaiting completion.

• Paul M. Rady is Antero's co-founder, Chairman & CEO.
• Glen C. Warren, Jr. is the company's President and CFO.
• Kevin J. Kilstrom is Vice President of Production.
• Brian A. Kuhn is Antero's Vice President-Land.
• Steven M. Woodward is Vice President of Business Development.
• Robert E. Mueller is Vice President-Geology.
• Mark D. Mauz is Vice President of Gathering, Marketing & Transportation.