COLUMBUS, Ohio — Total has acquired a 50 percent stake in a U.S. energy company operating in the West, giving the French oil giant access to a federal drilling lease.
Shale deposits in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah are thought to hold more than 1 trillion barrels of oil. About 800 billion barrels of that are believed to be recoverable.
Total did not say how much it paid for the stake in American Shale Oil, a subsidiary of IDT Corp., which has rights to the prospective shale-oil development in western Colorado.
It is just the latest of several European energy companies getting involved in shale projects in the U.S.
In November, Norwegian energy company Statoil Hydro bought a one-third interest for $3.37 billion in Chesapeake Energy’s stake to natural gas deposits in the massive Marcellus Shale area in Appalachia.
The Total-American deal is expected to close this quarter.
