EQT Shareholders Approve $10.6M Compensation for Toby Rice 2023
Last Wednesday, EQT Corporation held its annual shareholders meeting. These sorts of meetings are typically short and sweet, as was EQT’s meeting last week. Ahead of annual meetings, various resolutions are circulated for shareholders to vote on (by proxy before the meeting). There were three such resolutions on EQT’s agenda this year: Election of board members, hiring an accounting firm to do an independent audit, and executive compensation for 2023 (last year). In the bowels of the paperwork, we discovered that EQT CEO Toby Rice was being paid $10.6 million for his work last year, reckoned as $1 dollar in salary plus $9.6 million in shares of EQT stock and $1 million in incentive compensation. Rice’s compensation last year is actually down from 2022 ($11.6 million) and 2021 ($16.9 million).
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Two weeks ago, for April 1 – 7, there were eight new permits issued (see 
We tried to cram the gist of the news into the headline but found we could not. This is a big story, for multiple reasons. Most news outlets are reporting (and this is not incorrect) that EQT pulled off a big deal to divest a good chunk of its nonoperated assets (acreage and functioning wells in which EQT owns a minority stake) in northeastern Pennsylvania, trading those assets for 10,000 operated acres in Lycoming County, PA (in northeastern PA), plus 26,000 operated acres in Monroe County, OH, plus receiving $500 million cash, in a deal with Norway’s Equinor (formerly Statoil). EQT divesting from its nonop assets is a big deal. However, the bigger news, in our humble opinion, is that Equinor has (with this deal) completely exited all operated assets in U.S. shale. The company wants to keep its fingers in the U.S. shale pie, but only as a nonop operator — that is, investing in wells that other companies drill and maintain.
MDN is not a stock-picking service, but we spotted an interesting article appearing on the Seeking Alpha investor’s website about where to invest now so that when the price of natural gas eventually rebounds (and with it, lifts the stock price of gas producers), investors can make money. The investor/writer, who is a nuclear power engineer by training, proposes the theory that investing in the Marcellus/Utica is a better choice than investing in other gas plays because (a) our drillers have lower breakeven costs and (b) some of our drillers also produce NGLs, which fetch more money than methane.
Here’s a strange one we don’t quite understand. Yet. Two weeks ago we brought you the news that a jury in a federal court had decided a group of Utica shale drillers, including Rice Drilling (now EQT), Ascent Resources, XTO, and Gulfport Energy, were not guilty of “unjust enrichment” by drilling into the Point Pleasant shale layer that sits immediately below the Utica (see 
In January 2023, three Marcellus/Utica companies — Chesapeake Energy, EQT, and Equitrans Midstream — launched the Appalachian Methane Initiative (AMI), a coalition committed to further enhancing methane monitoring throughout the Appalachia Basin and reducing methane emissions throughout the region (see 
The annual CERAWeek by S&P Global conference is happening now in Houston. Everybody who’s anybody is there. (Yes, we’re nobodies; we’re not there!) Oil and gas CEOs, politicians, regulatory agencies — they all convene in Houston to talk about energy at what is billed as “the world’s premier energy conference.” Toby Rice, CEO of EQT Corporation (the largest natural gas producer in the U.S.), was there yesterday. He had some VERY interesting things to say during a panel discussion and on the sidelines. Rice touted the need for more pipeline infrastructure, predicting wild swings in the price of natural gas absent new pipelines. He also said there’s an even bigger market than LNG for U.S. natural gas. What could it be?
Yesterday, the big news broke that driller EQT Corporation is reuniting with pipeline company Equitrans Midstream (see 
Yesterday, EQT Corporation announced a deal to buy its former midstream division, now called Equitrans Midstream, for roughly $5.46 billion (see 
Earlier this week, MDN told you that EQT, the country’s largest natural gas producer, had implemented an immediate cutback on natural gas production of 1 billion cubic feet per day (see 
The country’s largest natural gas producer, EQT Corporation, headquartered in Pittsburgh and solely focused on drilling in the Marcellus/Utica, announced this morning it had sliced 1 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of its production because of the ongoing low price of natgas. Other companies have announced similar reductions, including a 25% reduction by Chesapeake Energy (see 
EQT Corporation, the largest natural gas producer in the U.S. (100% focused on the Marcellus/Utica) released its fourth quarter and full-year 2023 update yesterday. According to CEO Toby Rice, 2023 was a big year for the company which “set multiple drilling world records” and achieved its highest completion efficiency pace ever. Last year, EQT closed on the purchase of Tug Hill and XcL Midstream, adding major assets to the company’s portfolio. In 2023, EQT signed 2.5 million tons per annum (MTPA) of LNG export agreements to export roughly 5% of EQT’s total natural gas production. The company produced 2,016 billion cubic feet equivalent (Bcfe) in 2023, which works out as 5.52 Bcfe per day. As for 2024, Rice says his company is ready and quite willing to throttle back on production and do less drilling than previously planned…if the price of natural gas stays low.