Penn Virginia Corporation

From Wikimarcellus

Radnor, Pennsylvania-based Penn Virginia Corporation (NYSE: PVA) is an independent oil and gas exploration and production compnay. The wholly-owned subsidiary Penn Virginia Oil & Gas Corporation (PVOG) is its exploration arm. PVA owns a leasehold of 40,000 acres prospective for Marcellus shale in northeastern Pennsylvania and has additional holdings in West Virginia.

In an October, 2008 PVA was reported to be leasing Pennsylvania land prospective for Marcellus shale and has the intention of drilling there in 2009. So far it has leased roughly 40,000 net acres mainly in Pennsylvania.

According to an August, 2008 report their partner in the venture is Zone Oil & Gas. The project includes 3-D seismic mapping and drilling up to six wells in the Appalachian Basin. It covers 40,000 acres under lease in Fayette, Potter, Somerset, Tioga, and Westmoreland Counties in Pennsylvania.

A February, 2009 update provided by Penn Virginia indicated that the company had conducted 50 miles of 2-D seismic in northern Pennsylvania and planned to drill two Marcellus shale wells there by the end of 2009.

PVA also owns an extensive leasehold position in southcentral West Virginia including 8500 acres in Mason County and 30,000 in Boone County. During 2007 two horizontal wells were drilled in Mason County targeting the Huron shale. In Boone County one horizontal well targeting the Huron has been drilled and a second, vertical well was completed to both the Marcellus shale and the Huron shale. According to the aforementioned report in February, 2009 the company opted to defer the capital costs of connecting up these West Virginia Huron wells to a gathering system preferring instead to deploy the capital elsewhere during 2009.

A November, 2009 press release announced that Penn Virginia planned to move its divisional office in Kingsport, Tennessee to a new office in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. According to the release, the move was to be made for efficiency reasons in anticipation of growth in the company's Eastern Division related to the potential of the Marcellus shale. The move was to be effective March 31, 2010.

According to a February, 2010 company update, PVA was in the process of drilling test wells in its northeastern Pennsylvania leasehold. It had also been acquiring new leases and had budgeted up to $48 million for doing so. In January, 2010 the company had drilled its first vertical Marcellus shale test well in Tioga County, PA. Completion of this well was to be determined based upon analysis of the Marcellus shale portion of the core. PVA planned to drill up to 6 test wells with 4 of them to be horizontal. It had been a successful bidder in the state lease sale having acquired 3,700 net acres in Potter County, PA.

A press release appeared in March, 2010 regarding a planned pipeline gathering system planned by Penn Virginia Resource Partners LP to handle Range Resource's production in Bradford, Lycoming, and Tioga counties. The line was to have a capacity of 700 Mmcf/d and be built over a period of five years at a cost of %170 to $200 million.

• A. James Dearlove is Penn Virginia's President and CEO.
• Frank A. Pici is PVA Executive Vice President and CFO.
• H. Baird Whitehead is Executive Vice President and COO.