4 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Mar 25 – 31
What’s below dismal? The new permits report for two weeks ago showed just five new permits, which we called “dismal” (see 5 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Mar 18 – 24). Last week, for March 25 – 31, there were just four new permits issued. Technically, there were only two new permits (both in Pennsylvania), but Ohio’s Dept. of Natural Resources was tardy in their update and recorded two new permits last week for permits issued the week before. We didn’t report them two weeks ago, so we will report them this week. In PA, there was one new permit each issued to Snyder Brothers (Armstrong County) and Greylock Energy (Potter County). OH issued two permits to Ascent Resources (both in Guernsey County). West Virginia issued no new permits for the second week in a row.
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The highly functional and responsible Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC), unlike its completely dysfunctional and irresponsible cousin, the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), continues to support the shale energy industry by approving water withdrawals for responsible and safe shale drilling. Last Thursday, the SRBC approved 23 new water withdrawal requests within the basin, eight of them for water used in drilling and fracking shale wells in Pennsylvania. The Marcellus/Utica shale drillers receiving a green light from SRBC included Beech Resources, Chesapeake Energy, Greylock Energy, Seneca Resources, and Southwestern Energy.
ECA Marcellus Trust I, the royalty interest holder in some of the wells drilled and maintained by Greylock Energy in Greene County, PA, announced it would issue a three-cent ($0.03) dividend to unitholders for 4Q23. The company paid 4.3 cents per unit in 1Q23, nothing in 2Q23, and six-tenths of a penny ($0.006) in 3Q23 (see 
Greylock Energy is headquartered in Charleston, WV, with offices in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Wyoming and operations scattered throughout Appalachia and the Rockies. The company’s assets comprise more than 1.19 million acres, about 6,700 wells, including the operation of 4,000 wells throughout Appalachia (shale and conventional) and 2,600 miles of pipeline. Ryan Deaderick, executive vice president and COO of Greylock Energy, spoke to Hart Energy editorial director Jordan Blum on the sidelines of the recent Hart Energy DUG Appalachia conference in Pittsburgh. Deaderick said his company has expanded and added assets in the Rockies over the past 18 months. He said the company is “always looking for diversity of investment.”
Greylock Energy is headquartered in Charleston, WV, with offices in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Wyoming and operations scattered throughout Appalachia and the Rockies. The company’s assets comprise more than 1.19 million acres, about 6,700 wells, including the operation of 4,000 wells throughout Appalachia (shale and conventional) and 2,600 miles of pipeline. Grelock has contracted with a company called Tachyus (headquartered in Houston, TX) to use its cloud-based greenhouse gas tracking and reporting service called Aurion. The purpose is, of course, to lower Greylock’s carbon and fugitive methane footprint–and to prove that it has lowered it.
ECA Marcellus Trust I, the royalty interest holder in some of the wells drilled and maintained by Greylock Energy in Greene County, PA, announced it would issue a payout (the equivalent of a dividend) to unitholders of 4.3 cents per unit for 1Q23. That is down from 4Q22 when the Trust paid out 12.4 cents per unit, and down from 3Q22 when the Trust paid out 18 cents per unit. The company continues to hold back some profits ($90,000 in 1Q23) in order to build a cash reserve.
Here’s some major news that we confess we somehow missed back in March. Greylock Energy, which is headquartered in Charleston, WV, and has (until recently) been a pure-play natural gas driller in the Marcellus/Utica, now owns assets and drills for oil (and gas) in Utah and Wyoming. Kyle Mork, president and CEO of Greylock Energy, addressed Hart Energy’s DUG East conference in Pittsburgh yesterday. He talked extensively about Greylock’s decision to “go West young molecule” (our words). Why the Uinta and Green River Basin? Why now?
In early 2018, the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) collected a whopping $1.7 million fine from Energy Corporation of America (ECA) for violations at 17 well sites in Cumberland, Jefferson, and Whiteley Townships in Greene County, and Goshen Township in Clearfield County (see 
ECA Marcellus Trust I, the royalty interest holder in and another name for Greylock Energy, has just moved the goalposts. After issuing a payout (the equivalent of a dividend) to unitholders of 13.6 cents for 4Q21, the company has pulled back and will only issue a payout of 9.4 cents per unit for 1Q22. Why? The company announced it is building a bigger emergency fund than previously announced.
One of the hottest of the hot sectors in which to invest (right now) is shale energy. That’s according to multiple sources, including a veteran finance writer, investor, engineer, and researcher. In an article appearing on the OilPrice.com website, Alex Kimani talks up mid-cap energy stocks as outperforming the supermajors. Among two of Kimani’s top three picks are two Marcellus/Utica drillers, who are having a stellar year in stock performance. We went looking for the stock performance of other M-U drillers too. We have a list to share showing just how much each driller’s share price has increased this year.
ECA Marcellus Trust I, traded over-the-counter on the pink sheets, canceled distributions (dividends) to investors for the first three quarters of 2020 due to the pandemic and the crash in oil and gas prices. The company restarted paying dividends in 4Q20–a grand total of 9/10ths of one penny per unit. In 1Q21 ECA increased its distribution to 3.1 cents per unit. In 2Q21, ECA decreased the payout again, down to 2.8 cents per unit. In 3Q21 ECA hiked the quarterly dividend all the way to 7.6 cents per unit. The company announced yesterday for 4Q21 it will nearly double the payout to 13.6 cents per unit.