2010 ANNUAL REPORT | 9 horizontal wells drilled just to the Bossier may not always hold Haynes- ville rights. Therefore, Chesapeake and other producers have been drilling  aggressively to hold all rights through the Haynesville before the initial  three-year term of a typical lease expires. As a result, there has not been  much drilling to the Bossier to date. However, once our leases are held by  production (HBP) by Haynesville drilling (we expect to be largely complete  with HBP drilling by year-end 2011 and completely finished by year-end  2012), we will begin developing the Bossier Shale more aggressively in  2013. In the Bossier play, we own 205,000 net leasehold acres and esti- mate we could drill up to 2,600 net wells in the years ahead.  largest and most respected European energy companies. In this trans- action, we sold Statoil 32.5% of our Marcellus assets for $3.375 billion  in cash and drilling carries. Today, having sold 32.5% of our original 1.8  million net leasehold acres, we have returned to owning 1.7 million net  leasehold acres in the play and are the industry’s leading leasehold  owner, largest producer and most active developer. We are producing  from more than 100 net wells in the Marcellus on our 1.7 million net acres,  are currently drilling with 32 rigs and estimate we could drill up to 21,000  additional net wells in the years ahead.  Colony and Texas Panhandle Granite Wash — These  liquids-rich plays generate the company’s highest returns  (routinely more than 100%) and provided the inspiration  The very significant upward trajectory of value creation that  Chesapeake is on today is primarily  driven by the quality of our assets,  which feature dominant positions in 16 of the 20 most important major unconventional natural gas  and liquids plays in the U.S. for the company to find other liquids-rich plays in 2010.  The Granite Wash, and other plays with liquids-rich gas  production streams, provide the strongest economics in  the industry today because they possess the best of both  worlds: high-volume natural gas production along with  significant volumes of highly valued liquids that dramatically increase  investment returns.  Marcellus Shale — We first became aware of the Marcellus in 2005  when we were negotiating our $2.2 billion acquisition of Appalachia’s  second-largest natural gas producer, Columbia Natural Resources, LLC.  In 2007 we aggressively accelerated our Marcellus leasehold acquisition  efforts and began to prepare for our first drilling activities. By early 2008,  we had determined the Marcellus could be prospective over an area of  approximately 15 million net acres (approximately five times larger  than the prospective Haynesville core area and 10 times larger than the  Barnett core area).  We are producing from approximately 150 net Granite Wash  wells, are currently drilling with 16 rigs and estimate we could drill  up to 1,700 additional net wells on our 215,000 net leasehold acres in  the years ahead. Based on current NYMEX futures prices for natu- ral gas and oil, each Granite Wash well should generate approxi-  mately $11.5 million of present value (or up to an undiscounted  total of $19.5 billion for all 1,700 wells), making it obvious why finding,  leasing and developing more unconventional liquids-rich plays was  Chesapeake’s number one priority for 2010. We were very successful  After acquiring 1.8 million net leasehold acres, we entered into a  joint venture agreement in late 2008 with Oslo-based Statoil, one of the  Generating the highest returns in the company, plays like the Oklahoma Colony Granite  Wash inspire Chesapeake to find other liquids-rich opportunities.