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    Cabot Says Constitution Pipeline Construction to Begin this Fall

    not if but whenLast Friday during the Cabot Oil & Gas quarterly earnings call update with analysts, Cabot’s CEO Dan Dinges provided an important update on the Constitution Pipeline, a 125-mile pipeline that will stretch from the gas fields of Susquehanna County, PA into New York, to Schoharie County. It is a critically needed pipeline to get Cabot’s natural gas in Susquehanna County to markets throughout the northeast and New England. Although Williams is the lead company building the pipeline, Cabot is the other primary partner in the project. Currently the Constitution is 100% FERC authorized and they have 100% of the rights of way leases signed for the project. The only hold-up is the New York State Dept. of Environmental Conservation in granting 401 Water Quality Certificates that allows the Constitution to lay pipe through and under swamps, creeks and other bodies of water. According to Dinges, they expect NY to issue those permits any day now…
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    Cabot O&G 2Q15: Production Up 8%, Net Income Down 109%

    Last Friday Cabot Oil & Gas released their second quarter 2015 operational and financial update, along with holding a conference call to update financial analysts. Below is the Friday press release/update with the particulars of Cabot’s performance during 2Q15. There’s a lot to love about Cabot, one of our favorite Marcellus drillers. Production in the Marcellus year over year for the second quarter was up 7% from 2014 (total natgas production up 8% for all plays). The company continues to get leaner and meaner when it comes to controlling costs. For the first half of the year in 2015, Cabot has managed to trim the time it takes them to drill a well by four days from the time it took them just last year–meaning a 15% cost savings overall. Cabot, whose operations and drilling program is a fraction of the size of Chesapeake Energy, is worth twice as much as Chesapeake. Cabot’s market capitalization (the amount of stock issued times the price per share) is $10.96 billion as of this morning. Chesapeake’s market cap? $5.51 billion. That must really frost corporate raider Carl Icahn. 🙂 Anywho, Cabot is not immune to the brutally low prices for natural gas they receive in the northeast. In Cabot’s small neck of the woods, prices for natural gas are the lowest in the country. And that means Cabot has, finally, gone into negative earnings territory…
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    Cabot CEO Dan Dinges Provides Update for 2Q15 & Balance of 2015

    Today is Cabot Day on MDN–reporting on their 2Q15 results. We’ve told you about Cabot’s update on the Constitution Pipeline, and we’ve told you about their financial/operating results. In addition, Cabot hosted a quarterly earnings conference call with analysts from big banks/investment firms. Cabot CEO Dan Dinges gave a succinct and good overview of the performance for Cabot over the past three months, along with some “forward looking” predictions about what the company plans for the balance of 2015. Here is a transcript of Dan’s remarks from Friday…
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    EXCO 2Q15: Marcellus Production Down 23%; Net Income Down 1,991%

    EXCO Resources is a driller with operations in four different regions: North Louisiana, East Texas, South Texas, and the Marcellus/Utica region. Today EXCO posted their second quarter 2015 financial and operating results. During the first quarter EXCO sidelined any new Marcellus activity (see EXCO Resources Continues Marcellus Drilling Moratorium in 1Q15). That trend continued in 2Q15–EXCO drilled no new Marcellus wells during the quarter. In fact, MDN told you in May that EXCO is shopping its 150,000 Marcellus Shale acres (see EXCO Looks to “Restructure” (Sell?) 150K Marcellus Acres). Overall the company’s revenues dropped, like other drillers, in 2Q15. Year over year EXCO revenues dropped 49%. Factoring in expenses, EXCO’s net income was a massive loss, dropping 1,991% (they show a net loss for 2Q15 of minus $454.2 million). EXCO’s Marcellus production, because they haven’t drilled any new wells, decreased 23% from 2Q14. Below is the portion of the update dealing with the Marcellus…
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    Multiple Courts Dismiss Shareholder Lawsuits Against Magnum Hunter

    under the radarHere’s one flying under the radar that we didn’t know about–until now. In the spring of 2013 Magnum Hunter Resources (MHR), a driller now focused totally on the Marcellus and Utica Shale region, dismissed it’s accounting firm. Apparently some investors didn’t like that action and accused MHR’s senior management and board of directors of “breaches of fiduciary duties and other matters.” The investors filed lawsuits in seven different courts alleging misconduct. As of June 22, the last of those lawsuits was dismissed. In fact, all of the lawsuits filed have been dismissed and MHR paid out zero dollars to settle. Yes, it cost the company big money to defend themselves, but they held firm and didn’t cave and in the end they were exonerated from any wrongdoing…
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    WV Northern Panhandle Production Rockets 3X from 2012 to 2014

    Natural gas production in the northern panhandle area of West Virginia is rapidly expanding–nearly 3 times in 2014 what it was in 2012, according to West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey statistics. In Ohio, Marshall, Wetzel, Brooke, Tyler and Hancock counties natural gas production was 123.8 billion cubic feet in 2012. In 2014, that number ballooned to 346.7 Bcf. What about 2015 and beyond? And, who’s doing all that drilling?…
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    Pipeline Case: OH Judge Finds Public Right to Free Flow of Energy

    There are a number of pipeline battles currently going on. While residents in New England tend to be more unreasonable than most when it comes to pipelines, landowners in other regions also oppose new pipeline construction. Some of their opposition stems from nutty opposition to fossil fuels. But some opposition is legitimate–concerns over where the pipeline will go through a property. Or concerns about lease terms/compensation. One thing that doesn’t hurt anyone is to allow a survey of a property. We would encourage landowners to begin their dialog about a potential pipeline with the surveyors–to make companies aware of your concerns about the routing of a pipeline across your land. But some holdout landowners unreasonably resist even a survey–and they’re consistently losing in Ohio courts. Specifically we’re talking about the NEXUS Gas Transmission pipeline–a $1.5-$2.0 billion natural gas pipeline that will carry Utica and Marcellus Shale gas spanning 11 counties in Ohio, 3 counties in Michigan, and eventually connect to the Dawn Energy Hub in Canada. We recently told you that in most cases when landowners refuse access to surveyors, they lose (see NEXUS Pipeline Sues for Survey Access, Wins Most of the Time). Below we have news of a court decision from Fulton County, OH in which the judge outlines his reasons for ruling in favor of NEXUS to allow surveys to commence on properties for 15 hold-out landowners. The judge’s ruling is instructive. In it, the judge says the general public has a “right” to expect a “free flow” of energy products…
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    Group of Bostonians Use Religion to Protest 5-Mile Natgas Pipeline

    Every now and again it’s important to connect the dots–yet again–for new readers to MDN. Those who have been reading MDN for several years know that the category of what we broadly call anti-drillers don’t oppose natural gas shale drilling and pipelines and injection wells and railroad transloading terminals and…the list goes on…because of the sometimes legitimate issues of noise and truck traffic and lease abuses, etc. Every industry has it’s negatives. But that’s not why these people in their heart of hearts oppose natural gas. They oppose it because it’s a fossil fuel–which is, as we point out, an irrational position to hold. It’s irrational because the very sneakers on their feet they wear in protest marches, the clothes on their bodies, the materials their homes are built from, the cars they drive, the televisions they watch, the cell phones their faces are glued to, are all products made by with with fossil fuels. Plastics = fossil fuels. Plastics are hydrocarbons–you did know that, right? Hydrocarbons are fossil fuels–oil and natural gas etc. Like cancer metastasizes and invades its host, so too does the cancerous philosophy that mankind by burning fossil fuels is killing Mother Earth. So-called global warming is the philosophy–the point of view–that drives and justifies anti-drillers’ irrational opposition to shale energy. The latest example comes from a group of people in Boston (ab)using religion to oppose a 5-mile pipeline. The stated reason for their opposition? “Climate change is the pressing moral issue of our time, and religious leaders must speak out against practices that are destroying the environment”…
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    Will NY Gov Cuomo Ban LPG Fracking Too?

    A column in the New York Post asks the question of whether or not Gov. Andrew Cuomo will work to block LPG (liquefied petroleum gas, or gelled propane) fracking in the Empire State as he has done with water-based fracking. MDN told you earlier this month about the ingenious plan by Tioga County, NY landowners who have filed for a permit to use LPG fracking in a limited test (see NY Landowners File to Frack Horizontal Well w/Waterless Tech). We also gave you our analysis of how this action paints Cuomo into a corner (see Update on LPG Fracking in New York – What Comes Next?). The NY Post column does a great job exposing the lies of New York’s anti-drillers. They bleat and blat about contaminated water sources–that’s their stated objection to shale drilling. That’s the argument they always lead off with–how shale drilling will contaminate everyone’s water supply within a hundred miles. The argument is 100% false, but for the sake of our discussion, let’s remove water from the process, as LPG fracking does. To drill and frack an LPG well takes zero gallons of water. And yet, NY’s anti-drillers still object. Why? Because they irrationally hate all fossil fuels, including natural gas…
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