Williams Swallows Poison Pill to Prevent Company Takeover
Midstream (pipeline) giant Williams issued a press release last Friday to say they’ve just swallowed a poison pill. They don’t put it in those exact terms, but that’s what it’s called. The company’s board has adopted a “limited duration stockholder rights agreement.” Why? To fend off potential hostile takeover attempts from those who would buy up a significant number of shares of stock while the company’s share price is down due to the worldwide stock market crash over COVID-19 coronavirus concerns. Williams is not for sale and the company is certainly not to be found on the discount rack.
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Encino Acquisition Partners (aka Encino Energy) bought all of Chesapeake Energy’s Ohio assets for $2 billion in 2018 (see 
The double shock of less demand for oil because the COVID-19 coronavirus crisis has shut pretty much everything down (worldwide) AND the Saudis and Russians pumping oil to the outer limits, continues to cause the price of oil to remain at historically low prices. The Russians are trying to bankrupt American shale oil drillers by driving prices into the basement. The Saudis are trying to bankrupt Russia for leaving the OPEC+ fold (and the Saudis certainly don’t mind if American shale oil drillers are put out of business in the process). The low price resulting from the double shock is affecting not only big American shale oil drillers but also mom and pop conventional oil drillers too. Particularly small conventional drillers in western Pennsylvania.
Sen. Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi are the lowest of the lowest. They are blocking COVID-19 aid to suffering American people and businesses, holding the aid package hostage, in a bid to play to their radicalized political base. They are holding up an aid deal in order to, among other things, fund Big Green projects. Green lard. Graft. Corporate welfare that decimates fossil fuels and favors so-called renewables. “Democrats won’t let us fund hospitals or save small businesses unless they get to dust off the Green New Deal,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in a floor speech yesterday. This is tragic. This is despicable. This is UNFORGIVABLE.
The American Petroleum Institute (API) wrote a letter to both President Trump and the federal Environmental Protection Agency last Friday asking for “non-essential compliance obligations” to be temporarily waived. Such obligations include “record-keeping, training and other non-safety requirements.” The oil and gas industry wants to be able to better and more quickly distribute fuel during the COVID-19 coronavirus crisis–using fewer people to do so. Government red tape is enormous. API is simply asking the government to cut some of that red tape on a temporary (not permanent) basis to get the job done during this crisis.
Last Friday MDN laid out three potential options for how the U.S. government can deal with the Saudis and Russians flooding world markets with oil, driving the price into the basement in a bid to bankrupt American shale oil drillers, a practice called dumping (see 
Before Lord Obama and the EPA Obamadroids left office, they inflicted a great deal of damage to this country via onerous and outrageous new regulations. When President Trump took office, he immediately began to roll back and rightsize regulations at the EPA (and elsewhere), scaling back overregulation to common-sense regulation. We’re talking about regs like the horrible so-called Clean Power Plan. The Obamadroids and Big Green lobby (one and the same, with gobs of money) have litigated Trump’s efforts to restore sanity to EPA regulations every square centimeter of the way.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: New York State PSC embarks on plan to examine natural gas usage, investments; EQT weighing options with in-person annual meeting; NATIONAL: Chesapeake Energy could finally be headed into Ch.11 bankruptcy; Natural gas craters to 1995 levels on weather woes, coronavirus; Natural gas finally starting to buckle against the broader market liquidation; Energy companies slash another $19B as oil price languishes; Midstream prices crash: maybe we have seen this before; Oil jumps as markets panic; SPDR S&P oil & gas E&P ETF…The knife is still falling; COVID-19 and the crude oil price crash puts the screws on U.S. refiners; How will the coronavirus affect energy use in America?; SHALEout! (video).