Magnum Hunter Changes Its Name, Leaves the Bankrupt Past Behind
It appears to us as if Magnum Hunter Resources, which was founded by former CEO Gary Evans, is shedding the last vestiges of Evans by changing its name. “Wildcatter” Evans grew the company to be worth $1.4 billion in 2013 by borrowing heavily to drill in the Marcellus and Utica shales in West Virginia and Ohio, while at the same time financing the Eureka Hunter Pipeline that gathered and processed its production. Magnum Hunter has/had a number of subsidiary companies, like Eureka Hunter (pipelines), Alpha Hunter (drilling), and GreenHunter (wastewater). But then the price of gas (and oil) crashed, and although Magnum Hunter treaded financial water for a time, they eventually succumbed to bankruptcy in December 2015 (see Sad Day: Magnum Hunter Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy). Five short months later, in May 2016, Magnum Hunter emerged from bankruptcy–without Evans (see Magnum Hunter Emerges from Bankruptcy with CEO Gary Evans Gone). Apparently the new owners of the company (the former debt holders converted into equity holders) didn’t want Evans running the company. So Evans departed and a short time later started a new drilling company not focused on the Marcellus/Utica (see Gary Evans, Ex-CEO of Magnum Hunter, Starts New O&G Company). Must be Evans likes the “Hunter” name, because he named his new company Energy Hunter Resources. In what appears to be a bid to shed its former image and association with Evans, Magnum Hunter Resources has just changed its name–to Blue Ridge Mountain Resources…
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Yesterday MDN’s favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), issued our favorite monthly report–the Drilling Productivity Report (DPR). The DPR is the EIA’s best guess, based on expert data crunchers, as to how much each of the U.S.’s seven major shale plays will produce for both oil and natural gas in the coming month. For the past three reports, estimating production for November, December, and January, Marcellus natgas has increased. The trend continues in this latest report, which forecasts production for the coming month of February. Last month the EIA predicted natgas production in the Marcellus would zoom up by 160 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d). This month EIA predicts in the coming month Marcellus production will go up another huge 188 MMcf/d. The #2 gas-producing basin behind the Marcellus is the Permian (in Texas). That basin will also see a big increase in natgas production–an additional 103 MMcf/d–largely because of “associated gas.” The Permian is an oil play and is, by all accounts, the hottest shale play right now because of oil. But when drillers sink holes in the ground, other hydrocarbons come out of the ground along with oil–i.e. natural gas. Ergo, the more oil you drill for and extract, the more natural gas you get along with it. Here are the latest numbers for the major shale plays in the U.S….
Italian company Pietro Fiorentini has been, since 2013, warehousing and selling pressure regulators and valves for the natural gas industry out of rented office space in Wheeling, WV. Pietro Fiorentini actually manufactures the equipment they sell and for the past four years has held an option to purchase land in the Weirton, WV Three Springs Business Park. The company has just gotten off the pot and on Tuesday officials signed the paperwork to buy the land. Pietro Fiorentini will build a $9 million factory on Weirton site to manufacture the equipment they sell. Eventually the manufacturing plant will employ 150 people…
MDN has reported on the Ohio Dormant Minerals Act (DMA) for years. In a nutshell, there are two DMAs in Ohio–one passed in 1989 that went into effect in 1992, and another in 2006 which added certain additional procedural requirements to the 1989 version. The DMA in its various versions provides for mineral rights that had previously been separated from surface rights to transfer back to the surface owner under certain conditions. The problem, for drillers and for landowners in Ohio, is in knowing which set of DMA rules to use (1989 or 2006) in determining who owns the mineral rights. A number of DMA cases went before the Ohio Supreme Court. In September the Ohio Supreme Court ruled in three cases, saying all of the other cases come under those three (see 
In October 2015, Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) filed their official, full application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) seeking approval for their Orion Project (see 
Why doesn’t it surprise us that a Republican-in-Name-Only (RINO) State Senator from the 6th District (Bucks County, Philadelphia suburbs) is not only in favor of, but sponsoring a bill to levy a Marcellus-killing severance tax? PA State Senator Robert “Tommy” Tomlinson, an establishment lifer who has been in the state legislature since 1991 (first as a Representative, later as a Senator), sent around a “Co-Sponsorship Memoranda” yesterday asking Democrats, and along with any suckers from the Republican Party, to co-sponsor a bill he plans to introduce calling for a new severance tax on Marcellus drilling. Tommy wants to tax Marcellus drilling an extra 5%, on top of the existing impact fee, which is a severance tax under a different name, to give the money to (you guessed it) teachers unions. Tommy wants transfer millions of dollars out of the pockets of landowners and drillers and into the sinkhole of the failing “unfunded” pension system for state workers and teachers. The instantaneous effect of Tommy’s tax would be to kill all drilling in the state, which apparently doesn’t bother Tommy in the least…
In May, U.S.-based oilfield services company FMC Technologies announced they will merge with their much larger quasi-competitor, France-based Technip, in an all-stock deal that will create a new company called TechnipFMC worth $13 billion (see 
Rex Energy, a driller focused mainly on the Marcellus/Utica (headquartered in State College, PA), has had its share of financial challenges (
Gulfport Energy, an Oklahoma City-based independent oil and natural gas exploration and production company (“driller”) that is a “top 5” driller in the Ohio Utica Shale, released their fourth quarter 2016 and full year 2016 operational (not financial) update yesterday. Gulfport is part of the growing trend to drop one shoe first, then the other. The first shoe is almost always production and operational information (the good news). That doesn’t mean that the financial information is bad news–but sometimes that’s the case. For now, let’s revel in the good news! Gulfport’s net production during 4Q16 averaged 787 million cubic feet equivalent per day (MMcfe/d), a 7% increase over 3Q16 and a 22% increase versus 4Q15. Net production for full-year 2016 averaged 719.8 MMcfe per day, a whopping 31% increase over full-year of 2015. Below is the update, along with the newest investor PowerPoint presentation with lots of useful details…
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Michigan backs DTE electric contract with NEXUS, doesn’t back cost recovery; EPA & FERC at odds over Leach XPress pipe; Ohio’s Chart buys Hetsco; Range Resources donates $50K to hospital ER; big deals go down in Permian for Exxon and Noble; natgas production goes up in Oklahoma plays; reworking Obama’s dreadful environmental rules; Linde Engineering gets a new CEO; 2017 natgas outlook; corporate raiders take aim at NRG Energy; and more!