Golden Gate Capital (GGC), a San Francisco-based private equity firm, announced the closing of its acquisition of U.S. Silica Company (USS), the second largest U.S. miner and processor of industrial sand.
U.S. Silica, tracing its origins back to 1900, operates 13 industrial sand and other mineral mines and processing plants in the Midwest and Eastern US. [...]

Oilfield services provider Schlumberger Ltd. reporting a nearly 13 percent jump in profit driven by robust spending among customers searching for new sources of crude and natural gas. Unless the global economy goes into the tank, Schlumberger said it expects continued brisk spending on exploration and production as energy companies try to benefit from high [...]

A Lehman Brothers analyst raised his price targets on 37 companies in the oil services and drilling sector, seeing a strong recovery in 2008 and 2009 for North American natural gas drilling along with significant international growth over the next few years.
Analyst James Crandell’s top picks in the sector are Weatherford International Ltd., Halliburton Co., [...]

Canada’s oil-soaked sands are hot while natural gas drilling has cooled, illustrating the long-term nature of one business and shorter-term vulnerability to price swings of the other, analysts say.
“The economic life associated with these projects is measured in years, if not decades, as opposed to a 45-day gas well in Canada,” said Bill Herbert, co-head [...]

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist is urging leaders of a U.S. Senate committee to reject new legislation that could bring offshore oil and natural gas drilling up to 45 miles from Florida’s beaches.
The bill would cast aside a delicate compromise that Congress passed last year to open new Gulf of Mexico waters off Florida to drilling [...]

Natural gas drilling in the Southern Tier, once heavily weighted in favor of the drilling companies, is now shifting toward the landowners’ interests.
Two factors are pushing the pendulum. One is a new policy, implemented in August 2005, which allows parties with land in a well unit to buy their way into the drilling of that [...]

The Colorado Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld a $4 million jury award to a western Colorado sheep rancher who argued a natural-gas drilling company had not paid him all the royalties he was due over several years.
Tulsa, Okla.-based Williams Production Co. had appealed the August 2004 verdict, arguing that evidence was improperly excluded and [...]

Wentworth Energy, Inc. is pleased to announced the completion of the Red Lake Gas Unit #1-R well (”1-R”) in Freestone County, Texas. A four point test of the 1-R well yielded a calculated absolute open flow rate of 1.7 million cubic feet of gas per day. The 1-R well is an offset to Wentworth Energy’s [...]

Oil industry services provider Halliburton Co. was upbeat Friday despite a 40 percent decline in fourth-quarter profit, citing heavy demand for its oilfield equipment and personnel and predicting more of the same for 2007.
Earnings fell to $658 million, or 64 cents per share, compared with $1.1 billion, or $1.04 per share, during the same period [...]

For the first time in the City of Fort Worth, owners of a shopping center plan to drill for natural gas in the business parking lot.
The drilling will take place in the parking lot of La Gran Plaza, in front of the theatre. The location is roughly 350-feet from I-35 South at the Seminary exit.
Mall [...]