A press release announcing fourth quarter and full year 2016 results for Empire Energy Group caught our eye. The release talks about assets owned by Empire in the Marcellus/Utica region–specifically in Pennsylvania and New York. When we got digging, we found some interesting information. First off, Empire has operations in both Australia and (primarily) here in the U.S. One interesting observation is that Empire sold some of its considerable leases in Australia to Aubrey McClendon back in 2015 (see McClendon Nearly Triples Australian Shale Deal – 55M Acres!). Here in the U.S., Empire owns leases and wells in both the Midcontinent (Kansas) and in Appalachia (PA & NY). The website for Empire says this on the home page: “Empire Energy Group Limited is an oil and gas exploration and production (E&P) Company focused on onshore long-life oil and gas fields, primarily in the USA. The Company targets producing oil and gas assets with attaching low cost, low risk development acreage. The business strategy is to operate all assets. USA oil and gas operations are managed by an experienced and qualified technical team based in the USA. In addition to production assets, the Company is undertaking an exploration and development program of its extensive oil and gas shale opportunities in New York and Pennsylvania in the USA and The Northern Territory, Australia.” We went nosing some more and found that Empire owns 6,500 acres in NW PA, and 303,000 acres of leases in western NY. Yes, you can see the problem right away. There is no shale drilling in NY. Empire owns land on the wrong side of the border. So while they do have some conventional wells in NY, they don’t have (and won’t have) any shale wells in the Empire State any time soon. So although they advertise they have a presence in the Marcellus–it’s not much of one right now…
