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PA Superior Court Tosses $2.4M Arbitration Award Against PennEnergy

This is a cautionary tale of choosing your joint venture partner carefully. The Pennsylvania Superior Court threw out a $2.4 million arbitration award against Marcellus driller PennEnergy in a business dispute in a precedential ruling last week. The Superior Court judges overruled an award by an arbitrator. PennEnergy maintained the case should never have been in arbitration in the first place. The intended recipient of the award, MDS Energy, says the Superiors weren’t so superior after all and got it wrong. The case is complicated…
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Marcellus Shale Development (MDS) Floats $150M in New Units

A small Marcellus-focused drilling company based in western Pennsylvania is once again looking for investors. MDS Energy was established in 2005 by Michael D. Snyder. By 2006 the company offered its first investment partnership. Drilling companies today are as much about investments and finance as they are about sinking holes in the ground. MDS quickly grew and in 2007 founded a sister company to concentrate on oilfield services (drilling, construction, etc.) called First Class Energy. First Class has gone on to drill over 1,000 wells, mostly for MDS competitors since MDS itself has not drilled all that many wells–as of the end of 2017 (going by our Marcellus & Utica Shale Upstream Almanac) MDS had eight permits and had drilled four wells–all in Armstrong County, PA.
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Top 20 Marcellus Drillers in Southwest Pennsylvania

The sharp folks over at the Pittsburgh Business Times have been looking through data from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and have compiled a list of 20 drillers who have at least a dozen shale wells in the southwest PA region. And they ranked them from lowest to highest. We’ve grabbed the list below. The interesting thing for MDN is that there is one name in the list not familiar to us, and we’ve been watching this space since 2009. Always fun to learn something new. Here’s the list of southwest PA’s “Top 20” Marcellus drillers…
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Marcellus Driller MDS Sets up Financial Subsidiary in Denver, CO

A small Marcellus-focused drilling company based in western Pennsylvania is expanding–to Denver, Colorado! But not to drill wells. MDS Energy was established in 2005 by Michael D. Snyder. By 2006 the company offered its first investment partnership. Drilling companies today are as much about investments and finance as they are about sinking holes in the ground. MDS quickly grew and in 2007 founded a sister company to concentrate on oilfield services (drilling, construction, etc.) called First Class Energy. First Class has gone on to drill over 1,000 wells, mostly for MDS competitors since MDS themselves haven’t drilled all that many wells–we count 39 permits in PA, some of which are likely duplicates, issued to MDS Energy from January 2013 through April 2015, according to the newest edition of the Marcellus and Utica Shale Databook just released. In 2011 MDS formed MDS Energy Development, LLC, an investment firm concentrating on oil and gas investments. In order to offer investments as a broker-dealer (able to execute trades for themselves or others), MDS formed the subsidiary MDS Securities, LLC. It is MDS Securities that is expanding and moving its headquarters to Denver…
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MDS Energy Takes Next Big Step: Drills 1st Horizontal Wells in PA

Here’s a story we love to tell. A small, independent exploration and production (E&P) company located in the Marcellus Shale of Pennsylvania, with headquarters in Kittanning (Armstrong County), PA (near Pittsburgh), decided a few years back they would not sell out to a larger company but would instead stick around and see where the Marcellus rocket ship would take them. MDS Energy (an MDN subscriber and Databook purchaser, we’re proud to say) bought some drilling rigs and started drilling the vertical sections of horizontal wells for some of the bigger companies in the Marcellus. They also drilled their own vertical-only (conventional) wells, leaving the “big boys” to spend money figuring out the best way to drill horizontally in the Marcellus. The time is now right and MDS is taking it’s next big step: they’re starting to drill their own horizontal wells in western PA…
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MDS Energy’s Fracking Fluid Alternative for 3 PA Marcellus Wells

An interesting short item MDN picked up from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review about driller MDS Energy.

The South Buffalo Township Planning Commission (near Pittsburgh) recently recommended that township supervisors approve a request from MDS Energy to drill three Marcellus Shale wells. The interesting bit is the liquid MDS plans to use in fracking the wells…

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