Companies eager to capitalize on the shale revolution are buying up other companies that have deeds to land with access to reserves.
Two multibillion-dollar deals in the first quarter show the interest companies have in scooping up shale plays for the resources and technology. Below are major shale gas and oil acquisitions:

April 2011
• Marubeni will pay Marathon Oil about $270 million for a 30% stake in a U.S. shale oil project.

February 2011
• PetroChina pays Encana Corp $5.4 billion for half of a shale gas project.
• BHP Billiton pays Chesapeake Energy Corp $4.75 billion for gas reserves in the Fayetteville Shale in Arkansas.

December 2010
• South Africa's Sasol pays $1.03 billion for a half share in Talisman Energy Inc shale gas property.

October 2010
• CNOOC Ltd agrees to pay Chesapeake Energy $1.08 billion in cash for one-third of its Eagle Ford shale in South Texas.

June 2010
• India's largest listed company Reliance Industries will invest $1.36 billion in the U.S. shale gas assets of Pioneer Natural Resources.

May 2010
• Royal Dutch Shell says it will pay $4.7 billion cash to buy privately held East Resources, which controls 650,000 net acres (2,600 square kilometers) in the Marcellus Shale.

April 2010
• British gas producer BG Group said it would pay $950 million to buy a 50% interest in shale gas assets in Appalachia from EXCO Resources.

February 2010
• S.Korea's KOGAS invests $1.1 billion in developing Encana 's natural gas fields.
• Canada's Progress Energy Resources  agreed to buy certain northeast British Columbia Foothills assets for about C$390 million ($366.2 million) from Suncor Energy.

December 2009
• Exxon Mobil announced its plan to buy XTO Energy Inc for about $30 billion in stock. XTO's resource base is the equivalent of 45 trillion f³ of gas and includes shale gas, tight gas, coal bed methane and shale oil.
• Ultra Petroleum said it would pay about $400 million to an unnamed private company to buy 80,000 net
acres in the burgeoning U.S. Marcellus Shale region, giving it about 250,000 net acres and a potential for 1,800 net drilling sites.

November 2009
• Denbury Resources said it would buy Encore Acquisition Co for $3.2 billion, creating a company with 426 million barrels of oil equivalent in proved reserves. The acquisition would allow Denbury to leverage its enhanced-oil-recovery business into Encore's properties in Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota, and would give it a large stake in the Bakken shale on the U.S.-Canada border.

June 2009

• British gas producer BG Group paid Dallas-based Exco Resources Inc $1.3 billion for an interest in shale gas resources in Texas and Louisiana. The companies said each would own 50% of a venture to which EXCO is contributing 120,000 acres of land in the Haynesville shale gas area and associated gas infrastructure.

May 2009
• Talon Oil & Gas LLC bought 60% of Denbury Resources' natural gas assets for $270 million.
• Independent oil and gas company Quicksilver Resources agreed a joint venture with Italian energy giant
Eni to develop its Barnett shale properties in Texas. As part of the deal, Eni agreed to buy a 27.5% stake in Quicksilver's Alliance leasehold interests in the Fort Worth basin for $280 million.

March 2009
• Independent Canadian oil exploration firm TriStar Oil & Gas and Crescent Point Energy Trust agreed to buy Talisman Energy's lands in the prolific Bakken shale region of Saskatchewan and Montana for C$720 million ($567 million). TriStar was later acquired by Petrobank Energy and Resources, which combined its own conventional oil assets with TriStar to create a new company called PetroBakken Energy.