Marathon Oil adds to their Eagle Ford assets with an acquisition of 17,000 net acres in the liquids-rich core of the Eagle Ford shale play for $767 million.  My math makes it $44,118 an acre, which would need to be adjusted for production of 7,000 BOE on April 1 (how flush? anything behind the pipe?).  Scale and deep pockets (time value!) give the large E&P’s advantage.  Reuters

The higher price deck and horizontal drilling made wrong both the cornucopians and fears of the Hubbert’s Peak crowd.  I smell an undulating plateau.  A detailed discussion of the future of oil production:  Financial Sense

Scroll down for the China, Workhorse of the global Economy part.  Frank Holmes

Ominous chart patters (day or two old) at Global Macro and Peter Brandt

Off-topic:  The great realtor rip-off from The Economist