Range Resources Corp (RRC)

[OilStockReport]

Thoughts on this Utica Shale play?

Range Resources (RRC) has a good deal of exposure to the Utica Shale. Range is an innovative E&P company that may not be as well known to most investors as Chesapeake; however it was Range that drilled the very first horizontal well in to the Marcellus Shale a few years back. Range was also perhaps the first company to brief investors on the vast potential of the Utica Shale. The company gave a good discussion of it in their March 1st conference call. Range CEO John Pinkerton calls the Marcellus/Utica Shale a “triple play” or three plays in one. In other words, as we earlier explained, if you are involved in the Marcellus Shale play you are a defacto Utica Shale play because the Utica underlays the entire Marcellus and the Upper Devonian shale is a shallower zone above the Marcellus. Range expects to have a significant cost advantage in developing the Upper Devonian and Utica because they will be drilling where they already have been drilling Marcellus wells. Therefore, the synergies i.e., the sunk costs for acreage, roads drilling pads, gas lines etc should be about one third less than otherwise. Range has 700,000 net acres in the Marcellus and sixty (60%) per cent of that has potential for Upper Devonian and Utica Shale.