Allegheny County | Bradford County | Brooke County | Chesapeake Energy | Clinton County | Coterra Energy (Cabot O&G) | Energy Companies | Epsilon Energy | EQT Corp | Gulfport Energy | Harrison County | HG Energy | Jefferson County (OH) | Lewis County | Ohio | Pennsylvania | Range Resources Corp | Repsol | S.T.L. Resources | Southwestern Energy | Susquehanna County | Tioga County (PA) | Washington County | Weekly Permits | West Virginia
Weekly Shale Drilling Permits for PA, OH, WV: Dec 7-11
Last week Pennsylvania issued 21 new shale well drilling permits scattered across both northeast and southwest PA. Ohio issued 5 new shale well permits, all of them to the same company and the same well pad. West Virginia issued 3 new shale well permits, all in different counties.
Read More “Weekly Shale Drilling Permits for PA, OH, WV: Dec 7-11”
Capital expense (capex) investments made by drillers in the Marcellus/Utica during the third quarter of 2020 were the lowest in at least six years according to a new report (full copy below) from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). The report looks at nine of the top drillers in the M-U and finds collectively they cut capex investment by more than one-third in 3Q20 over 3Q19. And yet those same nine collectively spent a half-billion dollars more during 3Q on drilling and building projects than they earned in revenue from selling oil and gas. That’s troubling.
Dan Dinges, CEO of Cabot Oil & Gas, said last week: “2020 has proven to be the most challenging year for natural gas prices in the last 25 years, resulting from a multi-year trend of overcapitalization of both oil and natural gas assets across our industry.” Indeed. The company released its third-quarter 2020 update on Friday and reported a net loss of $15 million, compared to net income of $90.4 million in 3Q19. This is the first quarterly net loss for Cabot in recent memory. Still, there was plenty of good news coming from the 3Q update…
We spotted a couple of stories, one in Barron’s the other in the Wall Street Journal, about the pickup in the futures price of natural gas over the past week, and how those recent gains have led to impressive gains in the share price for Marcellus/Utica drillers. Yesterday the NYMEX Henry Hub futures price closed up 4.11% to $2.74/Mcf. The rising tide lifts all boats.
Here we go again. Just last week we told you that a New York City law firm couldn’t find enough interest to make a class action lawsuit against Cabot Oil & Gas using a sham indictment from the highly political Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office, so the law firm pulled the plug on the case (see 
Cabot Oil & Gas issued an operational update yesterday to announce that because of persistently low prices for natgas, as of Sept. 18 the company curtailed approximately 372 million cubic feet equivalent per day (MMcfe/d) of gross production to finish out the last 13 days of the quarter. After that?
Cabot Oil & Gas issued its 2Q20 update on Friday. CEO Dan Dinges said natural gas prices hit a historic low in 2Q (lowest since 1995), but he thinks the price will improve “this winter.” Although the price Cabot got for its gas last quarter ($1.52/Mcf) was 33% lower than a year ago, the company still made a profit. Cabot netted $30 million in 2Q, vs. netting $181 million a year ago. The company drilled 14 new shale wells, completed/fracked 31 wells, and placed 25 new wells online last quarter. They produced an average of 2.2 Bcf/d of natural gas.
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.
A warning right up front: This post is speculation and rumor. As you know if you’ve read MDN (or any other media source covering oil and gas in the past two weeks), on June 28 Chesapeake Energy filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (see