CNX’s Competitive Advantage: Owning Its Own Pipelines
We love a story about an individual or company that defies conventional wisdom and succeeds by charting its own course separate from the herd. Diversified Gas & Oil (DGO) is one such company. DGO buys up older conventional (and shale) wells in Appalachia, making money off the “long tail” of low production (see Diversified Zags, Finds Profit in Appalachian Conventional Wells). Another company charting a different path is CNX Resources. Yesterday we told you CNX is buying out the rest of its midstream/pipeline subsidiary (see CNX Resources Buying/Merging in Rest of CNX Midstream for $357M). Why is CNX buying back their pipeline operations, when so many others are selling pipeline operations?
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Radical environmentalists (far outside the mainstream) are making one final push to pressure the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to expand an already onerous new regulation it is planning to implement. Last December the DEP’s Environmental Quality Board (EQB) approved new regulations that supposedly will capture every last molecule of stray methane that leaks from shale drilling operations (see 
FirstEnergy is in the middle of an excrement storm. The company’s former subsidiary FirstEnergy Solutions (now called Energy Harbor) allegedly paid $60 million in bribes to Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and several of his associates to gain their assistance passing the hugely unpopular House Bill 6 (see 
How does one make money in the natural gas market these days when the price of gas is at historic lows? One way is if an investor was fortunate enough to bet the price would go down. Those folks made money. The other way is to…invest in drillers? Yep. Even though low prices hurt drillers, investors still like the looks of what is on the horizon, especially for companies operating in the Marcellus/Utica. Example: The stock price for Range Resources and EQT is up over 30% each this year so far.
Here’s a little known factoid that will be useful for anyone wondering what the price of NGLs (natural gas liquids) will bring in a given market at a given time. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), our favorite government agency, points out NGLs almost always fetch prices that are “range-bound” between the price of oil on the high end, and the price of natural gas on the low end. Natural gasoline (an NGL) tracks closest the high end and the price of crude oil, while ethane is at the bottom of list closest to the price of methane.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Track bribes before moving nuke deal; Many at OSU welcome proposed gas plant; NATIONAL: NY Times Lie: Oil and gas groups see ‘some common ground’ in Biden energy plan; What would a Joe Biden win mean for oil and gas?