EQT Says No Big M-U Drillers Left to Buy After Tug Hill Deal
Last week EQT Corporation confirmed it is buying Tug Hill’s THQ Appalachia operation with major assets in West Virginia for $5.2 billion (see Confirmed: EQT Buys Tug Hill’s THQ Appalachia for $5.2 Billion). THQ Appalachia is a joint venture between privately-held Tug Hill and private equity firm Quantum Energy Partners. Tug Hill was, according to EQT upper management, probably the last big M&A deal that will happen in the Marcellus/Utica. Why? The region has run out of large private drilling companies that could be purchased by deep-pocketed public companies like EQT.
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Yesterday MDN brought you the news that EQT Corporation is buying the West Virginia assets of Tug Hill Operating–the company’s THQ Appalachia operation–for $5.2 billion (see 
The rumors were right. Yesterday we brought you the news (rumors), as reported by both Reuters and Bloomberg, that EQT Corporation was about to seal a deal to buy Tug Hill’s THQ Appalachia operation with major assets in West Virginia (see 
Last week the three states with active Marcellus/Utica drilling, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, issued a collective 19 new drilling permits, down from 30 the week before. The top receiver of permits in PA was EQT (i.e. Rice Drilling), with five permits issued for the same well pad in Greene County. Range Resources and Inflection Energy each received two new permits.
Drillers (exploration and production companies, or E&Ps) were thrilled with record-high earnings and cash flow in the second quarter of this year. Soaring commodity prices and “strict financial discipline” on the part of oil and gas drillers resulted in pre-tax operating earnings and cash flows surging by 29% and 22%, respectively, from 1Q22. And 1Q22 was up too! So what did drillers, especially drillers in the Marcellus/Utica, do with all that extra cash? Did they pay down debt? Buy back shares of company stock? Issue higher dividends? Something else?
In July 2018, a group of 100+ southwestern Pennsylvania landowners sued EQT for failure to pay them rental fees for storing natural gas under their properties (see 
EQT Corporation, the biggest natural gas producer in the United States (and a pureplay Marcellus/Utica driller), issued its second quarter 2022 update yesterday. The company raked in $550 million in free cash flow during 2Q and produced 5.5 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day) of natural gas. But don’t look for EQT to increase production any time soon–not until (says top management) it can get more of its molecules to markets outside of the M-U. The company’s answer to moving more molecules is to try and expand LNG exports from the East Coast.
Bad old ideas become bad new ideas for those on the left. In June 2018, MDN exclusively brought our readers the news that Diversified Gas & Oil (now called Diversified Energy) had purchased EQT Corporation’s Huron Shale assets, with a bunch of conventional wells, in Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia for $575 million (see 
This is a truly brilliant move on the part of Toby Rice and those who run and manage EQT Corporation–the country’s largest natural gas producer. As you likely know (if you’re a reader of MDN), Rice has become the Apostle of Natural Gas and LNG, promoting natgas as THE solution to global warming (see 
This is one of those more bizarre court cases we’ve heard about. In April 2021, MDN reported that a group of West Virginia landowners/rights owners filed a claim against EQT, alleging the company had allowed leases to lapse, then at a later date, reentered their property and drilled new wells without permission (see