Chesapeake Stock Soars, Bankruptcy Rumors Soar Too
Chesapeake Energy’s stock went on a wild roller coaster ride yesterday. Over the past two days, the company’s stock rose by nearly 500% in value. Trading of the stock was halted 22 times yesterday for volatility. Chessy stock hit an all-time low of $8.41/share on May 14, the equivalent of a pre-reverse split price of just 4 cents per share–essentially worthless. The company’s shares rose over the past few days on the news that OPEC is extending its production cuts, boosting the price of oil. Right on cue, Bloomberg arrived early this morning with a story to throw cold water on Chessy’s rekindled stock–a story that the company has a plan to declare bankruptcy and turn current debtholders into the new owners, making all of those red hot shares of stock worthless. Bloomberg’s bankruptcy news sent the stock price down in pre-hours trading this morning.
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The world of LNG is sometimes a strange world for us. NGI (Natural Gas Intelligence) is reporting an LNG cargo ship loaded with LNG from Nigeria is steaming toward North America. LNG cargoes are notorious for changing routes at the last minute, given the wheeling and dealing that takes place between buyers and sellers. However, the latest intel has the Nigerian LNG cargo heading for…Elba Island, Georgia? That’s right. An imported load of LNG coming to an LNG export facility. Why?
EQT Corporation, the largest natural gas producer in the country (based in Pittsburgh) wants to double the number of shares of common stock from 320 million to 640 million–the first time it has increased shares of common stock in 25 years. Why?
Last December Chevron announced it was writing down the value of its Marcellus/Utica assets and putting those assets up for sale (see 
The Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC), the quasi-governmental agency tasked with overseeing water usage within the Susquehanna River Basin, has been a huge success with respect to partnering with the Marcellus Shale drilling industry. The SRBC recently updated a report (summary below) reviewing shale water usage drawn from the basin from 2008 to 2018. The report finds shale water usage has risen to become the #3 source of water used in the river basin–although shale usage of basin water is still a small fraction of that by larger users, including municipalities and electric power generation.
Last Thursday President Trump signed an Executive Order (EO) titled, “Accelerating the Nation’s Economic Recovery from the COVID-19 Emergency by Expediting Infrastructure Investments and Other Activities.” The EO taps the President’s emergency powers to address and mitigate the economic and employment crises resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, by invoking emergency permitting procedures for infrastructure projects, including pipelines, that are otherwise delayed by regulatory roadblocks. This includes projects subject to Clean Water Act water quality permits, the Army Corps of Engineers Nationwide 12 (NP12) permit program, and the Endangered Species Act. This EO potentially has big implications for finishing up both the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) and Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) projects.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Gov. Wolf pledges veto of bill prohibiting DEP from enacting big carbon tax; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: BP set to slash 10,000 jobs: ‘I can’t make your worries disappear,’ says CEO; OERB, Francis Tuttle offer free courses to idled oil, gas workers; NATIONAL: Shale producers’ hedging strategies take center stage; INTERNATIONAL: North America’s largest pipeline company aims to pivot to natural gas and renewable energy.