Utility Companies EQT is Supplying 1.2 Bcf/d of Gas Revealed
During EQT Corporation’s third quarter 2023 update and conference call (held in October 2023), the company announced “two of the largest, long-term physical supply deals ever executed” for 1.2 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of EQT’s molecules. Those molecules will flow on the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) beginning in 2027 (see EQT Sets New World Drilling Record; Deals to Sell 1.2 Bcf/d via MVP). Financial terms of the deals and the identities of the two companies receiving those molecules were not disclosed. However, EQT CEO Toby Rice said the deals were with two utility companies. This week, Argus Media published the identity of the two utility companies… Read More “Utility Companies EQT is Supplying 1.2 Bcf/d of Gas Revealed”
The MVP (Mountain Valley Pipeline) Southgate project won a major decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (DC Circuit), affirming a decision made by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to allow an extra three years to build the project. Southgate is an extension of MVP from its current termination point in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, into Rockingham County, North Carolina. Coincidentally (or not), a day before the DC Circuit’s decision clearing the way for the project, MVP filed a request with the NC Department of Environmental Quality for a permit to build the project in that state. 
For the week of May 26 – Jun 1, the number of permits issued to drill new wells in the Marcellus/Utica increased significantly from the previous week. There were 35 new permits issued across the three M-U states last week, up 11 from 24 two weeks ago. A whopping 27 new permits were issued in the Keystone State (PA) after issuing only four permits two weeks ago. EQT and its drilling subsidiary Rice Drilling received 10 permits, all of them in Greene County, spread across two pads. Spain-based Repsol received the second most permits, five, for a single pad in Tioga County. 
In January, MDN brought you the news that TECfusions, based in Tampa, Florida, had purchased 1,395 acres in Upper Burrell (Westmoreland County), PA, for a groundbreaking data center project called TECfusions Keystone Connect (see 
The data center high tide is lifting all gas drilling boats. That’s according to a new study from S&P Global Commodity Insights that finds the expectations of a coming boom in demand for electricity for data centers, which will create a boom in demand for natural gas to produce the electricity, is causing gas drilling companies to increase in value. It’s hard to accurately quantify the value for private companies, but for public companies (those with stock that trade on the open market), we can confirm that over the past year, the value for drillers with significant operations in the Marcellus/Utica has, on average, risen dramatically. 
A few weeks ago, MDN told you that EQT Corporation, the second-largest natural gas producer in the country (and the largest producer in the Marcellus/Utica) is buying out and merging in Olympus Energy for $1.8 billion (see 
Yesterday, MDN brought you the big news that EQT is buying out and merging in Olympus Energy (see 
The rumor mill was right. In February, MDN brought you the juicy rumor that Olympus Energy, founded in 2012 as Huntley & Huntley Energy Exploration (a company that drills exclusively in the Pittsburgh suburbs), was being shopped for sale by its main financial backer (see 
EQT Corporation wants to build three miles of gathering pipeline to a well pad in Cascade Township, Lycoming County, PA. The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) published a notice in Saturday’s Pennsylvania Bulletin inviting comments on a Chapter 105 Encroachment permit for a three-mile-long, 8-inch natural gas gathering pipeline being constructed on a 50-foot-wide right-of-way. 
Here’s a lawsuit that was not previously on our radar. A West Virginia couple, Bart Mickey and Jami Mickey, sued EQT alleging the company concealed a 2020 Surface Access and Use Agreement allowing EQT to remove a pond, diminishing the value of a property the Mickey’s purchased in Marshall County for $350,000. The Mickeys said in their lawsuit that EQT signed a deal with the previous owners of the property, allowing EQT to remove a pond for $10,000 (an action required under a 2015 Consent Decree with the EPA and WVDEP). Then, EQT (according to the Mickeys) delayed recording the easement with the county. When buying the property, the Mickeys said the easement/deal did not appear in a title search.