Magnum Hunter Sells 5K Acres for $41M in Tyler County, WV
Magnum Hunter Resources’ drilling subsidiary, Triad Hunter, is selling 5,210 net acres of leases in Tyler County, WV to an undisclosed competitor for $40.8 million, the company announced yesterday. The sale will take place tomorrow. According to MHR, the acreage is “non-core,” “undeveloped,” and “unproven.” The leases on the acreage are also set to expire soon, so it’s drill now or never–and for MHR, it was never. Why not convert that acreage into some cold, hard cash? Incidentally, if you do the math, it works out to be a sale price of $7,831 per acre…
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Investment firm Topeka Capital Markets recently issued a report (for their clients) of the “most likely” companies in the oil and gas space that will be takeover targets, presumably this year. Unfortunately we don’t have a copy of the report, but we do have a list of the names they say are likely targets. The list has seven companies on it–three of which are focused on the Marcellus/Utica. Two of them are some of the biggest in the Marcellus/Utica. One of them has our eyes popping out, frankly with disbelief…
David Fessler is energy and infrastructure strategist (i.e. stock analyst/researcher) with The Oxford Club–a publisher based in Baltimore, Maryland that publishes the Oxford Resource Explorer, among other financial publications. Fessler spends his days immersed in the energy industry and in the stocks of companies in that industry. Fessler and The Oxford Club have produced a special report called “The Oil Company Death List” which is a list of 19 publicly-traded oil and gas companies that, according to a formula worked out by Fessler, will “die soon.” That is, they’ll go bankrupt if they don’t sell themselves or otherwise sell off major assets. Why? They’re “swimming in debt” and way over leveraged with “ugly balance sheets.” Fessler’s simple formula is all about a company’s debt ratio. When a company’s debts reach 4 times or higher its earnings (EBITDA), that’s a huge red flag. Below we have the list of 19 on the “death list” along with a copy of Fessler’s full report (describing his methodology). The interesting/troubling aspect is that 8 of the 19 are Marcellus/Utica operators–one of which is #1 for highest debt-to-earnings ratios. Some companies in the list surprised us–others did not. Is your favorite Marcellus/Utica driller in the list?…
As MDN chronicled on Friday, there is a dispute between GreenHunter Resources and the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) over what, exactly, constitutes “oil field waste” (see 
MDN now believes we have the full story, and a proper understanding, for the current war of words between GreenHunter and the U.S. Coast Guard over the issue of barging produced water, sometimes referred to as brine, on the Ohio River and other inland waterways. On Wednesday MDN brought the news that GreenHunter claimed the Coast Guard has given the all clear to begin barge shipments of brine (see 
Was GreenHunter fibbing when they claimed the U.S. Coast Guard has given them permission to barge produced water down the Ohio River? MDN brought you the news yesterday that parent company MagnumHunter CEO Gary Evans and GreenHunter COO Kirk Trosclair said they have received approval from the U.S. Coast Guard to ship produced water via barge down the Ohio River (see