The plan is to decide by the middle of next year on where the companies can team up, a StatoilHydro official said.

“At this point in time, we are looking at 14 different plays all over the world together with them to try to narrow it down,” Oivind Reinertsen, president of StatoilHydro’s US and Mexico operations, said told Bloomberg today.

They are looking in such countries as Hungary, Poland, India, Australia and China, he said.

StatoilHydro agreed in November to pay $3.38 billion to buy a stake in Chesapeake’s Marcellus Shale acreage and to fund drilling for the venture.

The deal gave StatoilHydro access to the expertise it lacked on assembling and exploiting shale-gas properties, Reinertsen said.

There are shale formations around the world that may be at least as prolific as the Barnett and Marcellus formations in the US, Reinertsen said.

Not enough study and development work has been done to assess their potential, he said. StatoilHydro will consider such factors as production potential and accessibility.

“You could have picked 20, you could have picked 25,” Reinertsen said.

“You have to do an evaluation, and you also have to make an evaluation of where it’s available.”

StatoilHydro said in November that it had an alliance with Chesapeake to develop unconventional gas projects outside the US.

Such a venture would mark Chesapeake’s first overseas development.

Chesapeake boss Aubrey McClendon declined through a spokesman to comment to Bloomberg on the progress of the search with StatoilHydro.

StatoilHydro expects to drill 15,000 to 16,000 wells in the Marcellus Shale, Reinertsen said.

He said the company is not looking at other projects in the US with Chesapeake.

“We have the Marcellus with them, and I think we have to develop that,” Reinertsen said.

Published: 21 May 2009 19:13 GMT  | Last updated: 21 May 2009 19:26 GMT