What Does Cimarex Purchase of Cabot Mean for the Marcellus?
Last week we shared the bombshell news that Cabot Oil & Gas, one of the premier drillers in the Marcellus, is merging with (being acquired by) Permian driller Cimarex Energy (see HUGE NEWS: Permian Driller Cimarex Buying Out Cabot Oil & Gas). We followed that story up with reaction by the markets, which (at the time) was one of bafflement (see Markets “Baffled” by “Unexpected” Cabot Merger with Cimarex). Now that analysts have had a week or so to digest the news, some are speculating on what this news may mean for the larger Marcellus region. The broader implications.
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All three M-U states received permits to drill new shale wells last week, but not a lot. In fact, it was one of the lowest overall number of permits issued in recent memory. Pennsylvania received just five new permits, and some of those were reissued permits. Ohio received four permits. And West Virginia just a single new permit.
Diversified Gas & Oil recently changed its name to Diversified Energy. Along with the name change came a strategy change. Until last month Diversified had concentrated on building the company by buying older (mature) oil and gas wells in the Appalachian Basin. In April the company announced it is branching out beyond Appalachia for the first time with a purchase of ~780 net operated wells and leases in the Cotton Valley/Haynesville region of Lousiana for $135 million (see 
Yesterday we shared the devastating (for us) news that Cabot Oil & Gas, one of the premier drillers in the Marcellus, is merging with (being acquired by) Permian driller Cimarex (see 
The judge in a lawsuit initiated by Cabot Oil & Gas against a Susquehanna County, PA landowner and his lawyers has had it up to here with the ongoing stonewalling and delay tactics by the landowner’s lawyers. “Four years we’ve been spinning our wheels on this nonsense,” the judge said. “The court is extremely frustrated, to put it politely.” The judge bordered on being impolite at a hearing last Thursday…
As we reported a month ago, a group of West Virginia landowners/rights owners filed a claim against EQT alleging the company had allowed leases to lapse, then at a later date reentered their property and drilled new wells (see 
We’re devastated. We know you’re not supposed to have favorites, but we do. Our favorite Marcellus/Utica driller for years has been Cabot Oil & Gas. We know some great folks who work for Cabot. It has been a peerless operator in the northeast Marcellus–making money when nobody else could. Cabot treats its landowners well, cares about the environment, gives big money to local nonprofit causes, and in general is the best kind of corporate citizen anybody could wish for. We suppose it was only a matter of time before Cabot became a target in this merger mania we’re currently going through. This morning Cabot announced a “merger of equals” with Cimarex, a big driller in the Permian and Midcontinent. The truth is Cimarex is buying out Cabot.
NGL (natural gas liquid) revenues for U.S. drillers soared in the first quarter of 2021–up 100% (i.e. doubled) over the same quarter in 2020, which was the quarter when COVID-19 began to seep into the public consciousness. In particular international demand for U.S. liquefied petroleum gas (LPG, or propane) helped propel NGL revenues higher in 1Q21. Guess which company posted the highest year-over-year increases for both NGL prices and revenues?
Back in March MDN told you about supposed violations by Chesapeake Energy of the federal Clean Water Act and the Pennsylvania Clean Streams Law and Dam Safety and Encroachments Act by failing to identify and protect swamps (i.e. wetlands) at a number of oil and gas well sites in Pennsylvania (see 
Last November Gulfport Energy, the third-largest driller in the Ohio Utica Shale (by the number of wells drilled), filed for a “pre-arranged” Chapter 11 bankruptcy (see 
We’ve seen this routine play out dozens (maybe hundreds) of times over the years: Publicly-traded drilling companies float new IOUs (notes) to pay off older notes coming due. Why they never just pay them off and get out of debt we don’t know–that’s above our understanding of high finance. We just know this is the way it always has and likely always will work. Antero Resources, the third-largest natural gas producer in the U.S. and the second-largest NGL producer, focused entirely on drilling in the M-U (mainly in West Virginia) is the latest to do the IOU refinancing thing.
Diversified Gas & Oil Company, which owns close to 8 million acres of leases with some 60,000 (mostly) conventional oil and gas wells (with over 400 Marcellus/Utica shale wells) in the Appalachian Basin, is no longer calling itself Diversified Gas & Oil Company. Instead, the company has changed its name to Diversified Energy Company. The company also changed its website URL from the old dgoc.com to