Marathon To Get Rid Of Notorious Sub

US oil company Marathon Oil Co. is gong to sell its subsidiary, gas producing company Pennaco Energy Inc., which operates all of Marathon's coal-bed methane operations in the Powder River Basin.
Marathon OIL explains its move as a matter of portfolio management for the Company, and the recent financial trends in the natural gas business make Marathon to sell Pennaco.
Pennaco Energy operates about 2,500 methane wells in the basin and employs 55 people.
However, Pennaco has a good experience in lawsuits. The company was the first to settle in a 2001 class action suit over contested deductions from the payments made by area producers to their royalty holders. Also it is involved in a complicated action filed by four state and national environmental organizations in January 2000 over the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's pre-leasing environmental review process, known informally as the "Pennaco case?.