Former EQT CEO: Shale Revolution a “Disaster” for Investors
One of the highlights for MDN editor Jim Willis in attending last week’s Northeast Petrochemical Conference in Pittsburgh was the opportunity to meet and hear speak Steve Schlotterbeck, former CEO of EQT. Steve is the guy who pulled off the buyout/merger of Rice Energy into EQT, creating the largest natural gas producing company in the United States. He had the guts to walk away from EQT when the board refused to pay him what he was worth (see EQT CEO Steve Schlotterbeck Suddenly Quits, Leaves Company). Last Friday morning Steve opened the final day of the conference with more guts and plain talk. He said the shale industry has been “an unmitigated disaster for buy and hold investors.” Whoa! What did he mean?
UPDATE: We have a full transcript of Steve’s speech below.
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The nasty proxy war between EQT CEO Rob McNally and Toby Rice over who will control the company following a July 10 annual meeting just got a whole lot nastier. Last Friday, McNally revealed that a review of internal documents they received as part of their purchase of Rice Energy in 2017 show that in the span of two weeks in 2015 some 25 complaints by Rice employees were made against Toby with the Rice HR department, although the nature of the charges are not detailed, leaving it open to shareholders to speculate.
LOLA Energy was birthed near the end of 2015, by former EQT executives using private equity money from Denham Capital (see 
Although the second quarter isn’t over yet, EQT has just released “preliminary” 2Q19 financial and operational results in a bid to fend off a takeover attempt. EQT’s current management and board of directors is in a tough fight to retain control of the company. Toby and Derek Rice, formerly of Rice Energy (which was sold to EQT in 2017) are making a play to replace the board of directors and all of EQT’s top management.
A West Virginia Circuit Court case in September 2017, Crowder and Wentz v EQT, found in favor of surface landowners ruling that EQT did not have the right to extend underground shale wells to adjacent properties where EQT also owned the mineral rights (see 
Yesterday Toby and Derek Rice issued another (new) letter to EQT shareholders in the quest to make a case that the existing EQT board and management must be thrown out. A few hours later EQT responded with its own letter to shareholders. Here’s the latest in the proxy war to control EQT.
It’s hard enough for drillers to get permits town by town in Pennsylvania, where the standards are all different thanks to the seven selfish towns that appealed the Act 13 law passed in 2012 (see 
On Monday Toby and Derek Rice–the Rice brothers (formerly owners of Rice Energy that sold itself to EQT in 2017) sent an open letter to EQT shareholders and a “white” proxy card, asking shareholders to vote for the Rices’ picks as board members (see 
A few new developments to report in the war to control EQT. Late last week brothers Toby and Derek Rice, formerly of Rice Energy, announced they are trimming their slate of proposed EQT board members by two (from nine to seven). There was no explanation for why the two were dropped from consideration, other than the Rice boys said they had reviewed EQT’s proposal to add three new board members (replacing three existing board members), and that two of the three, in the Rices’ opinion, “appear qualified” to serve on the board and “as a result” Rice dropped two of its proposed slate of board members.