After a year with few deals, the Niobrara shale play saw $435 million of asset sales in the second quarter of 2014, according to a study by the firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Two of the three deals involved foreign buyers, according to Rowena Cipriano-Reyes, a Denver-based partner with PwC’s energy practice.
PwC tracks deals of $50 million or more but doesn’t release the names of buyers and sellers.
Companies operating in the oil-rich Niobrara formation — which stretches from Colorado into Wyoming — sold “non-core assets” in the shale, Cipriano-Reyes said.
“It looks like a trend toward alignment,” she said.
The Rocky Mountain region saw a total of 10 deals valued at $3 billion, according to PwC.
Nationally, foreign buyers made 15 deals in the second quarter of 2014, accounting for $8.5 billion of value, a sharp increase over the single deal worth $590 million during the same period last year.
