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   By Jason Womack 

   Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES 

 

HOUSTON (Dow Jones)--Chesapeake Energy Corp. (CHK), a leading U.S. natural gas producer, said Thursday it will dedicate more of its resources to finding oil.

The strategy represents a big shift for the company, which has gobbled up land in the nation's most promising onshore natural gas fields and pursued a breakneck drilling pace to bring those new gas supplies to market.

Chesapeake and other independent natural gas producers such as Southwestern Energy Co. (SWN), Petrohawk Energy Corp. (HK) and Devon Energy Corp (DVN), have pioneered drilling for gas from deeply buried onshore formations of shale rock. Once considered uneconomical to exploit, shale-gas production has boomed over the past couple of years. These fresh supplies, combined with the economic downturn, helped push gas prices to their lowest in more than seven years in September, though winter's cold has brought prices back up somewhat.

The market for oil has proved more resilient, with prices more than doubling over the last twelve months, making that commodity much more attractive to producers. Last week, EOG Resources Inc. (EOG) said it will invest more heavily in oil related projects in the future.

Aubrey McClendon, Chesapeake's chief executive, said during a conference call with investors that once the company has met the obligation on its shale gas leases, it will pare back its gas drilling in places like the Fayetteville Shale in Arkansas, the Haynesville Shale in Louisiana and the Barnett Shale in Texas. To secure acreage, producers must establish production before the lease expires.

"We will begin ramping down activity in those areas and allocating those rigs to the oil areas," McClendon said during a conference call with investors.

The company plans to cut its Fayetteville Shale drilling activity in half by the end of 2010, when its acreage there will be held by production.

Chesapeake has identified six oil fields, where it holds a combined 600,000 acres and plans to add 400,000 more acres over the next year. The company will use horizontal drilling, an innovation widely used to extract shale gas, to tap those oil resources.

"If you are a good shale player--and Chesapeake is a top-tier shale producer--it makes sense to look at oil," said David Pursell, an analyst with the Houston-based energy investment bank Tudor Pickering Holt & Co.

-By Jason Womack, Dow Jones Newswires; 713-547-9201; jason.womack@dowjones.com