Antero Resources | Armstrong County | Ascent Resources | Beaver County | Belmont County | Butler County | Coterra Energy (Cabot O&G) | Energy Companies | EQT Corp | Monroe County | Ohio | Ohio County | PennEnergy Resources | Pennsylvania | Snyder Brothers | Southwestern Energy | Susquehanna County | Tyler County | Washington County | Weekly Permits | West Virginia
31 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Mar 21-27
Last week Pennsylvania issued 21 new shale well permits, with Snyder Brothers grabbing seven, PennEnergy Resources getting six, and Coterra Energy (formerly Cabot Oil & Gas) receiving five. In each case, the permits for each company were for a single well pad. Ohio issued just three new permits last week, two for Ascent Resources and one for Southwestern Energy. West Virginia finally came back to life, issuing seven new shale permits last week. Six of the WV permits were for Antero Resources, one for Southwestern Energy.
Read More “31 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Mar 21-27”
It’s been about 3½ years since Encino Energy in partnership with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board closed on buying Chesapeake Energy’s Ohio Utica assets for $2 billion (see 
Since February 2020 EQT Corporation’s credit rating (for company-issued bonds) has been at the “junk” (i.e. non-investment grade) level. Two of the three top credit ratings agencies–Standard & Poor’s Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings–recently upgraded EQT’s credit rating, returning it to investment grade. So far Moody’s has not followed, but we’re guessing it won’t be long before Moody’s upgrades EQT’s rating too.
Public company Gulfport Energy, the third-largest driller in the Ohio Utica Shale (by the number of wells drilled), emerged from bankruptcy less than a year ago, in May 2021, with a new board and new top management (see 
As we were researching background for our lead story today of a potential Gulfport Energy/Ascent Resources merger, we discovered we never reported on Gulport’s fourth quarter and full-year 2021 results. In 4Q21 Gulfport’s production was 1.07 billion cubic feet equivalent per day (Bcfe/d), virtually the same as 4Q20. Gulfport’s production numbers include both the Ohio Utica and the other play where Gulfport drills, the Oklahoma SCOOP. For the full year, Gulfport produced an even 1.0 Bcfe/d on average in 2021, versus 1.04 Bcfe/d in 2020–down just a tad.
Coterra Energy (formerly Cabot Oil & Gas) remains one of our favorite Marcellus/Utica drillers. We personally know some of the great people who work there. We’ll never forget having a private tour of a drill site in Susquehanna County, PA by Coterra’s chief Marcellus driller, Buddy Wylie. During the tour, Buddy waxed eloquent on mud logging, showing us rock chips under a microscope. Seeing a drilling operation up close, understanding how wells are planned a year or more in advance, coordinating all of the logistics (when the sand needs to arrive, pipe inventory, trucks to move equipment, backhoes to get the pad ready, etc.) it dawned on us, this stuff really is rocket science! The smart folks at Coterra have done it again–more rocket science. This time they’ve developed a new method for predicting natural gas and oil reservoirs.
If an upstream (drilling) company with a long-term pipeline contract files for bankruptcy, does that give the company the right to break its pipeline contract? A major shipper on the Rockies Express (REX) pipeline, Ultra Resources, filed for bankruptcy with the express plan to skip out on its obligations to REX (see 
In October 2020 Nick DeIuliis, President and CEO of CNX Resources Corporation, announced the forthcoming publication of a new book he authored (see 
Each quarter NGI (
You might think that Toby Rice, son of Daniel Rice III who was, at one time (for over a decade), the single most successful and profitable mutual fund manager in the world, was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. You might think that everything was given to Toby Rice on a silver platter. You would be wrong. Prior to running the largest natural gas producer in the U.S., Toby Rice was, among other professions, a chimney sweep (cue the song from Mary Poppins, Chim Chim Cher-ee). He then swept floors for $9 an hour while he attended grad school to learn about fracking. Toby knows what it’s like to work (hard) for a living.
We’ve heard of “supermajors”–those six to seven integrated oil and gas companies that have a market capitalization of $100 billion or more (including ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Total). We’ve heard of “majors”–integrated oil and gas companies defined as having a market capitalization of $10 billion to $100 billion. And we’ve heard of “independents”–smaller companies that focus just on drilling (not integrated, meaning no downstream and possibly no midstream operations). A Reuters article introduces to a new concept–mini-majors. Among that group is EQT Corporation.
The CERAWeek conference was held in Houston, Texas all of last week. We’re still analyzing important news from the event. The CEOs of major drillers and midstream companies were there, as were heads of government agencies (like Jennifer Granholm, Biden’s incompetent Secretary of Energy). For example, we spotted a report from a session where the heads of three drillers, Pioneer Natural Resources, ConocoPhillips, and Chesapeake Energy, shared their insights on what lies ahead for 2022 and 2023. The panel provided insight into how and why growth (new drilling, more production) is being limited in U.S. shale plays, including in the Marcellus/Utica.
The mighty BP (formerly British Petroleum) admits they were wrong in the company’s latest Annual Energy Outlook for 2022 (full copy below). In BP’s Energy Outlook for 2020, BP (wrongly) predicted the world had hit so-called “peak oil” demand for crude oil and other liquid fuels, topping out at around 100 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2019. Whoops. That was wrong. BP now says oil/liquids demand will rise to 101 million bpd by 2025 and stay there for another five years, to around 2030. As for natural gas, the LNG trade “grows strongly over the first 10 years of the outlook” and then tapers off. By 2050 LNG production, claims BP, will only be 10% higher than it was in 2019.