McClendon’s American Energy to buy 55 million acres in Australia

HOUSTON – Shale gas wildcatter Aubrey McClendon is buying up large swaths of Australian land to explore for shale oil and gas months after Chevron and ConocoPhillips abandoned unsuccessful drilling projects there.

McClendon’s two-year-old company American Energy Partners has struck four separate deals to buy 55 million acres in the McArthur Basin in Australia’s Northern Territory and is working to secure another 10 million acres there, according to an internal company memo obtained by Fuelfix.

That acreage is roughly 1.5 times the size of Oklahoma, McClendon says in the memo, and about 10 times bigger than the productive portion of the Marcellus and Utica shale plays in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. McClendon didn’t disclose a price tag for the land in the memo.

“The Australian oil and gas community seems very excited about us bringing our world-class resource development capabilities to a country that is resource rich, but to date has not experienced successful large scale unconventional oil and natural gas resource development,” McClendon said. “We are going to change that!”

The sellers include a private company and Australian oil and gas producers Armour Energy and Empire Energy Group. The acreage spans five sub-plays within the McArthur, including the Beetaloo, Carpentaria, Glyde, North McArthur and South Nicholson basins.