Half of Williams Board, Including 2 Corporate Raiders, Quit
Nearly half of the Williams board (6 of 14 board members) were part of a cabal that tried to force the company to sell itself to Energy Transfer Equity–a deal that went horribly wrong. Following the aborted merger, six of Williams’ board members tried to engineer a palace coup to depose current CEO Alan Armstrong. The coup failed and the board members were either forced out, or resigned in disgust (we’re not sure). Either way, it’s good news for Williams and their operations in the northeast. Among the board members pushing for a sale to ETE (and pushing for the ouster of Armstrong) was Keith Meister, a disciple and student of evil corporate raider Carl Icahn (see Bad News: Corporate Raiders Take Aim at Williams). Another corporate raider who was dug in like a chigger, Eric Mandelblatt, was also pushing to replace Armstrong (see Evil Corporate Raiders Double Investment (& Control) in Williams). On Friday Williams announced the chairman of the board, Frank MacInnis, is stepping down for “personal reasons” and that another five board members are leaving with him. Among those leaving are corporate raiders Meister and Mandelblatt. Good riddance…
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In April MDN told you about Chesapeake Energy’s deal with bankers to reaffirm their $4 billion line of credit (see 
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Statoil, based in Norway, is a big player in the West Virginia Marcellus Shale. Statoil paid property taxes to Marshall County, WV in 2015 and later found, during an audit/review, that they had overpaid the county by some $300,000. Ouch. So Statoil politely asked for their money back. Marshall County has said “nei.” The WV Tax Department argues that Statoil “acted negligently” and exercised “poor judgment” in not finding the mistake sooner. At least that’s how we read it. So Marshall and WV intend to keep the overpayment. Apparently Marshall isn’t the only county where Statoil says it overpaid on taxes. The company is also seeking refunds in Wetzel, Ohio and Brooke counties as well…
Last Friday MDN told you that TransCanada completed its $10 billion purchase of Columbia Pipeline Group (see 
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Southwestern Energy, out of the woods or just another dilution story; Cuomo’s lost Marcellus opportunity (and lost jobs); everyone wins in the cracker war; Texas royalty owners sue Chesapeake Energy; EIA says U.S. a net energy exporter by 2017; natgas fills the hole left by coal; petroleum product exports riding high; Shell wants Aramco to pay $2B in bustup fee; Obama’s climate policy is a hot mess; and more!