Belmont County | Energy Companies | EQT Corp | Gulfport Energy | Industrywide Issues | Lease & Royalty Payments | Litigation | Ohio | Rice Energy
Belmont County, OH Landowner Wins $40M Trespass Case Against EQT
A relatively short jury trial last week in a Belmont County, OH court resulted in a quick, three-and-a-half-hour decision in favor of a landowner against Rice Drilling (now EQT) and Gulfport Energy in a trespass case. The jury awarded the landowner, Tera LLC (owned by Thomas Shaw), a $40 million judgment. It’s believed to be the single largest jury award in Belmont County history.
Read More “Belmont County, OH Landowner Wins $40M Trespass Case Against EQT”
Last week not a whole lot of permit action was goin’ on. Pennsylvania scored only a single (1) new permit. We can’t remember the last time that happened! The PA permit was for a well that will be drilled by EQT in Greene County. Ohio’s Utica got skunked with no new permits. West Virginia rode in to save the day, posting 5 new permits–4 of them for Tug Hill and 1 for Antero Resources.
According to an analysis done by S&P Global Market Intelligence, the five largest drillers in the Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale resumed their drilling in June in a big way. S&P’s analysis shows those five drillers were responsible for 51% of the new drilling permits issued last month, up from 28% of new permits issued in May. Perhaps we know why. The price of natgas at regional hubs in PA rocketed over the past month. At the Leidy Hub in the northeast’s dry gas window (centered on Susquehanna County, PA), cash prices went from a low of 93.7 cents/MMBtu on May 3 to $3.07/MMBtu at the end of June.
Last week MDN told you that EQT Corporation, the largest natural gas driller in the U.S., had released its 2020 ESG report and announced the company would be “net carbon zero” by 2025 or sooner (see 
Yesterday EQT, the largest natural gas producer in the U.S., released its annual Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Report, outlining the company’s 2020 operational data and initiatives aimed at improving the way EQT produces “environmentally responsible,” reliable, and low-cost energy. Additionally, EQT announced targets to achieve net zero Scope 1 and 2 so-called greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in its production operations by or before 2025–less than four years away.
EQT continues to fall all over itself in its efforts to prove the natural gas it extracts from Mom Earth is environmentally friendly and safe and good and yummy and worthy and… We’ve lost track of how many certification programs the company has joined–at least four prior to yesterday. The latest (fifth?) program EQT has joined is the United Nations’ Climate and Clean Air Coalition’s Oil & Gas Methane Partnership (OGMP 2.0).
Each quarter NGI (Natural Gas Intelligence) runs the numbers and publishes a list of the 25 top natural gas marketers in the U.S. These are not necessarily the top 25 producers of natural gas (although in some cases they are), but the top 25 sellers (vendors, jobbers) of natural gas. NGI’s latest quarterly report shows overall the biggest sellers of natgas “lost ground” once again in 1Q21, which continues a two-year trend of year over year declines in the amount of gas sold.
Analysts at S&P Global Platts continue to track the performance of some of the country’s biggest shale gas drillers (most of them located in the Marcellus/Utica). S&P tracks production, spending, and the performance of their stock price. The price of natural gas has gone up over the past three months and along with it, the stock price for most (not all) shale gas drillers. For example, the share price for Range Resources has soared, gaining 42% in value over the last 90 days.
So-called ESG (environmental, social, governance) programs are popping up everywhere–kind of like spring dandelions. Especially programs aimed at the E (environmental) part of that acronym. EQT Corporation, the country’s largest natural gas producer (focused 100% on the Marcellus/Utica) has recently gotten the ESG religion. EQT has joined (by our count) no less than four ESG programs this year. The latest is a program sponsored by LNG export king Cheniere Energy, aimed at monitoring and cutting down on methane emissions at drill sites. Two other M-U drillers are joining the Cheniere effort too.
RBN Energy is a fountain of great information about the oil and gas sector. Headed by industry icon Rusty Braziel, RBN tracks and reports on a number of O&G companies. One of the best features of their information service is tracking the performance of three groups of publicly-traded O&G companies: Oil-Weighted E&Ps, Diversified E&Ps, and Gas-Weighted E&Ps. That last group, the gas-focused companies, is a list of 10 E&Ps. Only two of the ten don’t have any operations in the Marcellus/Utica–all the rest do. RBN has just published a post about the financial performance in 1Q21 for all three groups. The numbers are very encouraging.
Can we get an amen! We have an evangelist in the house. Toby Rice, CEO of EQT (the largest natural gas producing company in the U.S.) is preaching the gospel of natural gas. No surprise there. But what may surprise you (it did us) is just how much Rice is pushing natgas as the alternative to coal in power generation. In an interview with Barron’s, Rice declared we need “every tool” to end energy poverty around the world, and “natural gas is the most evolved tool” to do it. Amen!
As we reported a month ago, 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 (see