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NEW YORK — China's state-owned offshore oil and gas company is intensifying its search for oil in the western United States.
CNOOC Ltd. announced Sunday it will pay $570 million for a one-third stake in Chesapeake Energy Corp.'s drilling project in an emerging oil field in northeast Colorado and southeast Wyoming.
Chesapeake, an oil and natural gas company based in Oklahoma City, will operate the 800,000-acre project in a pair of basins in a region called the Niobrara shale. CNOOC will pay two-thirds of the project's drilling costs, up to an additional $697 million.
In October, CNOOC paid $1.08 billion for a one-third stake in a Chesapeake drilling project in South Texas.
Both deals give CNOOC access to an emerging source of oil in the western United States: shale deposits.
