Alta Resources Shopping 547K Marcellus Acres, Asking $3B
We don’t write much about Alta Resources, a shale drilling company co-founded by the inventor of shale fracking, George Mitchell. But that doesn’t mean Alta doesn’t drill in the Marcellus. The company owns some 547,000 gross (239,000 net) acres producing natural gas from approximately 900 wells in the Marcellus Shale across Bradford, Wyoming, Sullivan, Lycoming, Clinton, and Centre counties in northeast Pennsylvania. Alta is shopping all of their considerable Marcellus assets, looking for a buyer.
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Early last week MDN shared the great news that Enbridge’s Weymouth, Mass. compressor station finally, after years of government delays in building it, went online (see
Earlier this week MDN brought you the big news that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear the PennEast Pipeline vs. New Jersey eminent domain case (see
On Joe Biden’s first day in occupying the White House, he signed an Executive Order (EO) suspending new oil and gas leasing while the Interior Department reviews existing leases and permitting practices for 60 days. The aim is to make the federal lease ban permanent. However, some permits on existing leases will continue to be issued during the 60-day review period. You may think Biden’s federal lease ban does not affect the Marcellus/Utica region. You would be wrong.
Over the past week, the Enverus U.S. rig count jumped up by another 14 active rigs, making the new count 456. That’s the highest the rig count has been since April 2020 when the count began to drop like a rock as the coronavirus pandemic began to bite deeply. While the dry gas Marcellus lost one rig, the wet gas Marcellus gained one rig and the Ohio Utica also gained one rig, for a net +1 gain to 43 active rigs in the M-U combined region.
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