HG Energy Rumored to be Shopping Itself for Sale – Asking Price $3B
Bloomberg News (not the most reliable source) is reporting that HG Energy, a Marcellus/Utica driller headquartered in Parkersburg, West Virginia, is considering selling itself for $3+ billion. HG is a privately held company established on January 1, 2011 with backing from private equity firm Quantum Energy Partners. Where are the company’s assets located?
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We’ve been tracking a bill in West Virginia that will finally, after more than eight years of trying, bring forced pooling to the Mountain State for Marcellus/Utica shale wells. Senate Bill (SB) 694 sailed through the WV Senate in record time and earlier this week hit the WV House. Yesterday the full House voted to approve SB 694 with some tweaks, sending it back to the Senate. Last night the Senate approved the House changes and the bill is now officially passed and on its way to the desk of Gov. Jim Justice for his signature. Will he sign it?
You have to hand it to the Rice boys, they sure know how to make an entrance and grab the spotlight. While attending the annual CERAWeek event in Houston yesterday, EQT CEO Toby Rice unveiled a plan to “unleash” American LNG, supplying Europe and the world with our LNG, which would displace coal, lower carbon dioxide emissions planetwide, and wean the world off the energy produced by despots like Russia and Iran. It is a bold plan with specifics.
On the same day that EQT CEO Toby Rice released his plan to “unleash” American LNG (see today’s companion story), the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) published a post that talks about LNG production from a decidedly “leashed” perspective. While Rice envisions new pipelines, rigs, and export facilities that will handle a huge increase in Marcellus/Utica drilling, the EIA’s vision is status quo–constrained pipelines from the M-U region.
Spanish-owed Repsol owns 214,000 net acres of leases in the Marcellus Shale, primarily located in northeastern Pennsylvania in Bradford, Susquehanna, and Tioga counties. Part of Repsol’s acreage number includes 43,000 acres recently purchased from Rockdale Marcellus (see 
The West Virginia State Legislature passed House Bill (HB) 2581 on the last day of the annual WV legislative session in April 2021. HB 2581 required the State Tax Commissioner to develop a revised methodology to value oil and natural gas properties for the purposes of assessing property taxes. The State Tax Department submitted an emergency rule last summer that was, quite frankly, a mess. The rule created a complex system that is currently mired in controversy with both drillers and landowners confused about how much of a tax bill they will owe this year. There were two competing bills in this year’s session to correct the cockup from last year. Only one of them has survived and is close to passing.
As we write about today in a couple of different posts, EQT CEO Toby Rice has a bold vision to “unleash American LNG” to, in part, supply American natural gas to our friends in Europe. Rice’s plan is not an overnight plan, but it can work and it can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emissions floating in Mom Earth’s atmosphere (if you care about such things, we personally do not). There are currently 14 (!) LNG export facilities approved by the U.S. that could be built and come online in the next year or two. That’s enough new plants to double our current LNG exports. Why haven’t the backhoes begun to dig on any of these projects? Two roadblocks.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Chesapeake completes acquisition of Chief Oil & Gas; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Justices urged to pass on Spire’s fight to retain permit; NATIONAL: Dow jumps 700 points as oil prices fall, but worries far from over; Biden no longer working ‘like the devil’ on gas prices, shifts blame to Putin; INTERNATIONAL: Saudi Aramco is fast closing in on Apple as #1 company; What will it take for Europe to give up Russian gas?