Highlands Natural Resources enhances land position in Nobrara shale play

Shares in Highlands Natural Resources are down almost 4% after it executed an expanded agreement with Renegade Oil & Gas Company LLC, significantly enhancing its land position in its East Denver, Colorado, Niobrara shale play.

It also enabled operational flexibility that would provide the Highlands' engineering team with the potential to save up to $500,000 per well.

The agreement simplified and accelerated a number of procedural and red-tape matters related to drilling additional wells beyond the first six specified in the original Renegade document.

Under the agreement, Highlands acquired full control of the Niobrara oil and gas lease covering 640 acres in Arapahoe County, Colorado.

The acquired lease covered Section 15 of Township 5S 64W, where Highlands had previously farmed-in to Renegade's position.

Under the previous farm-out agreement, Highlands was required to drill its first four East Denver wells as tightly spaced pairs in the extreme south and extreme north of Section 15, then to spud a third pair of wells in Sections 32 and 33 to the south.

At 10:56 GMT, shares in AIM-listed Highlands were down 3.96% to 24.25p each.