EQT Chairman Rohr & CEO McNally Ready to “Talk” with Rice Boys
A week ago MDN brought you the news that Toby and Derek Rice, formerly of Rice Energy, have launched an effort to take over the company they sold Rice Energy to (see Rice Brothers Attempt to Take Over EQT, Install Toby as CEO). In recent months the Rice boys have had private conversations with EQT’s top dogs, Chairman of the Board Jim Rohr and CEO Rob McNally, but according to Toby and Derek, those talks went nowhere. The Rice boys say EQT needs some new energy and a new direction, to leverage the world class assets it now owns. And the Rice boys think they have just the plan to accomplish it. After going public with their plan and their intent to wage a proxy war (get board members elected who will endorse their plan), word has leaked out from “sources” that Rohr and McNally want to have another round of talks with the Rice boys, to hear more about their plan. Which causes us to ask, didn’t all that get discussed the first time around? What’s the real purpose of more “talks” with the Rice brothers?
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“Well, the EQT situation is a total mess.” So began a super secret email to MDN from a highly-placed source we implicitly trust. Not long after receiving that email, we spotted a press release from the Rice brothers, Toby and Derek, who along with their other two brothers, previously founded and built Rice Energy into a major Marcellus/Utica operator. The Rice brothers sold their company to EQT last year for $8.2 billion (see 
Two weeks ago MDN told you about a class action lawsuit that’s been brewing in West Virginia since 2013, brought by 10,000 WV landowners and royalty rights owners against EQT over the company’s practice of deducting post-production expenses from royalty payments (see 
The West Virginia Surface Owners’ Rights Organization (WVSORO) is making some big accusations against EQT (perhaps other drillers too) in saying that EQT, which once owned thousands of conventional oil and gas wells in the state, is selling those wells to companies that may go out of business and therefore will not be able to properly plug those wells as they reach end-of-life and no longer produce. Specifically, WVSORO mentions the recent sale by EQT of its WV conventional assets to Diversified Gas & Oil. In June, MDN brought you the exclusive news that Diversified had purchased EQT’s Huron Shale assets in Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia for $575 million (see 
EQT certainly isn’t following Dale Carnegie’s advice on How to Win Friends and Influence People. Just the opposite, as the company continues to squeeze every last penny it can out of landowners’ pockets who hold old “flat rate” leases in West Virginia. We’ve reported on EQT’s efforts to overturn WV’s Senate Bill (SB) 360, passed earlier this year and signed into law by Gov. Jim Justice (see 
On January 29, 2017, EQT used underground horizontal directional drilling (HDD) to drill a hole under State Route 136 in Allegheny County, PA, to install a water pipeline. As they were drilling, using what we now know was an out-of-date map, EQT hit an abandoned coal mine full of water, and four million gallons of acid mine drainage (AMD) leaked into the Monongahela River. EQT worked hard and fast to stop the leak (stopping it two days later) and set up a system to prevent any further leaks. Now, nearly two years later, it’s time to pay the piper. EQT just agreed to a fine of $294,000 for violating the Clean Streams Law, and payment of an additional $100,000 to the Clean Streams Foundation to provide for maintenance, operation, and replacement of a system to keep AMD from leaking at the site in the future.
It’s been five years in the making, but finally a class action lawsuit that began in 2013, on behalf of 10,000 West Virginia landowners and royalty rights owners against EQT’s practice of deducting post-production expenses from royalty payments, will finally get its day in court in two weeks. That’s what we learn from an extended article published by ProPublica and the Charleston Gazette-Mail on the topic of WV drillers and their practice of “whittling away payments” from rights owners. Just over a month ago MDN told you about an elderly WV couple who won their private lawsuit against EQT on the same matter (see 
As of today, EQT Midstream, a division of EQT (the driller), is no more. In its place is Equitrans Midstream Corporation–a completely new, standalone company that is no longer tied to, nor a part of, EQT. The changeover happened at 11:59 pm Eastern time last night. Today is the first full day of a new era for EQT and its former midstream division. Thomas F. Karam is president and chief executive officer of the new Equitrans Midstream. What led to the split between EQT (the driller) and EQT (the midstream company)? We’ll explain.
On Wednesday a man in Clarksville (Green County), PA turned on his gas stove and it exploded, catching fire to and leveling the entire house. The man, his girlfriend and young child were helicoptered to a hospital burn unit. The working theory/assumptions are (a) the man didn’t smell mercaptan, therefore the source of the gas that exploded was not from the stove or line into the house itself, and (b) because there is an EQT shale well “across the street” and a gathering pipeline that runs “next to the house,” methane “may have” migrated from the shale well to the home, or methane leaked from the gathering line into the home.
The Ohio Oil and Gas Association (OOGA) and St. Clairsville Area Chamber of Commerce sponsored an update on the Utica Shale and its impacts in southeastern Ohio at a one-day event held yesterday at Belmont College. The upshot of the day seemed to be this: The Utica is still creating thousands of jobs, and still attracting millions of dollars in investment. Among the speakers were reps from both EQT and Ascent, who had some interesting comments about their respective operations. Question: Who do you think is the largest natural gas producer in Ohio today? One of the speakers made the surprise claim that her company is now the top producer in Ohio.
The expert analysts at RBN Energy have just published their “fourth and final” in a series of posts looking in detail at E&Ps (exploration & production companies, or “drillers”). One of the groups of E&Ps they examine are “gas-weighted” E&Ps–or drillers who mostly extract natural gas. In looking through the list, you immediately realize every one of them has operations in the Marcellus and/or Utica Shale region. Yes, a few also have operations in other plays, but they all have at least some operations here. The real value in the article is an accompanying spreadsheet comparing various financial metrics (apples to apples)–things like total revenue, lifting costs, production costs, and “pre-tax income,” meaning profitability. How do our drillers compare with each other?