MPLX (former MarkWest) Reports Gathering & Processing Less M-U Gas
In late 2015, MPLX (i.e. Marathon Petroleum) bought out and merged in the Utica Shale’s premier midstream company, MarkWest Energy, for $15 billion (see MarkWest Energy Investors/Unitholders Approve Merger with Marathon). The “new” MarkWest, aka MPLX, plays on a much larger stage now, including ownership and operation of major assets in the Permian Basin and in the Bakken Shale, in addition to the Utica/Marcellus. On Tuesday, MPLX issued its fourth quarter and full-year 2022 update. The company reports gathering and processing slightly less natgas in the M-U in 2022. But it was a comment from MPLX’s CEO during a conference call that really hit us in the gut.
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Yesterday was the first day of the two-day Shale Insight conference being held in Erie, PA. By all accounts, it was a great day. Among the all-stars presenting were Toby Rice, CEO of EQT Corporation, Nick Dell’Osso, CEO of Chesapeake Energy, Greg Floerke, COO of MPLX, and Neil Chatterjee, former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman. The important role of LNG, pipelines, regulations, and more were discussed. One of the themes of the day: Natural gas is not a bridge fuel, but the destination.
In late 2015 MPLX (i.e. Marathon Petroleum) bought out and merged in the Utica Shale’s premier midstream company, MarkWest Energy, for $15 billion (see 
Last week MDN told you about an unplanned outage at two MarkWest natural gas processing plants located in West Virginia (see 
Marathon Petroleum, the parent company of MPLX (formerly called MarkWest Energy) announced some big changes last November. Namely, they caved to “activist” investors (we still call them corporate raiders) and their demands to split the company in three and dump the current CEO (see 
As MDN reported in early October, so-called “activist investors” Elliott Management and D.E. Shaw want Marathon Petroleum (parent of MPLX, otherwise known as MarkWest Energy) to split itself into three separate companies, and a couple of other large shareholders called for Marathon CEO Gary Heminger to be fired (see 
As MDN reported two weeks ago, so-called “activist investors” Elliott Management and D.E. Shaw want Marathon Petroleum (parent of MPLX, otherwise known as MarkWest Energy) to split itself into three separate companies, and a couple of other large shareholders are calling for Marathon CEO Gary Heminger to be fired (see 
Here we go again. “Activist investor” Elliott Management is pressuring Marathon Petroleum to split itself up into three companies–retail (Speedway convenience store chain), refining, and midstream (or MarkWest Energy). Recall that Marathon bought out and merged in MarkWest just a few years ago, in December 2015 (see 
If Jeff Bezos (Amazon CEO) and Tim Cook (Apple CEO) jump off a cliff, should you, as CEO of an energy company, jump off too? The CEOs of ExxonMobil, Chevron, Marathon Petroleum and several other big oil and gas companies have just answered that question in the affirmative. Splat. Perhaps they were caught up in the euphoria of the moment. Perhaps they were shamed. (A new disorder for the DSM V: “CEO shaming.”) For whatever reason, a group of CEOs from some of the largest U.S. companies now say the people who buy their company’s stock and fund them via infusions of investment capital are no longer the #1 priority for their companies. We wonder what investors in those companies think. Have they had a change of heart? “Here, take my money and pee it away with no returns. Please! I don’t need this money any more.” Hey Jeff and Tim, we have a bridge in Brooklyn we’d like to sell ya…
MPLX, formerly known as MarkWest Energy, recently released their second quarter 2019 update. There seems to be a new emphasis for MPLX on the Texas Permian play, which is detectable in the update. However, much of the company’s revenue continues to come from our region. A slide embedded deep in the Appendix of the latest slide deck tells an interesting story for us: Of the ten processing and fractionation plants MPLX is currently building or planning to build, six of them are in the Marcellus/Utica region. We have the list below.
Some interesting comments by Jim Crews, vice president of northeast business development for MPLX (formerly known as MarkWest Energy), during a presentation he gave at the Independent Oil and Gas Association of West Virginia’s (IOGAWV) Summer Meeting last week. Crews said lack of natural gas liquids storage is a crisis (our words, reflecting his sentiment). And we need storage not only here in the Marcellus/Utica region–but across the country. “We’re out of storage,” he said, and “Cargoes are just being given away.”