Chesapeake Energy | Energy Companies | Epsilon Energy | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Pennsylvania | Susquehanna County
Epsilon Sues Chesapeake to Drill 4 Marcellus Wells, Court Overrules
Epsilon Energy concentrates most of its effort on the Marcellus in Susquehanna County, PA. Epsilon doesn’t typically do its own drilling. The company joint venture partners with (gives money to) other companies, like Chesapeake Energy, and the other company typically does the drilling. Epsilon, according to its website, owns ~4,000 net acres in the PA Marcellus. Epsilon sued Chesapeake Energy earlier this month over lack of access to drill wells on acreage Chesapeake says it doesn’t want to drill. A Texas bankruptcy court judge has tossed Epsilon’s lawsuit. Looks like bankruptcy is a “get out of your contracts for free” card for Chesapeake.
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In our opinion, we have yet to fully understand the long-term, permanent changes in society that have happened because of the COVID-19 pandemic. There are signs that things have permanently changed. For example, a significant number of people now work from home rather than commute to an office in downtown. Many workers like working from home better! In a signal that COVID long-term changes are impacting the Marcellus/Utica industry, two major M-U companies with office space in the Southpointe business park (Pittsburgh suburb in Washington County) are shopping a collective 213,000 square feet of office space they no longer need because their workers have permanently relocated to home offices.
All three M-U states received permits to drill new shale wells last week. Pennsylvania received a big 21 new permits. Ohio received 7 new permits last week, all of them for Encino Energy (two different well pads). West Virginia received just 2 new permits, both for HG Energy on the same pad in the same county.
Olympus Energy, the renamed Huntley & Huntley Energy Exploration (HHEX), concentrates its drilling in the Pittsburgh suburbs, including Upper Burrell and Allegheny Townships in Westmoreland County, PA. Olympus has just cut a $1.2 million deal with the Municipal Authority of the City of New Kensington to extend three miles of waterlines near three Marcellus well sites in Upper Burrell and Allegheny Townships.
We don’t write much about Alta Resources, a shale drilling company co-founded by the inventor of shale fracking, George Mitchell. But that doesn’t mean Alta doesn’t drill in the Marcellus. In 2020 Alta was in the Top 10 PA drillers list (see 
In May 2020 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case challenging whether or not the state Attorney General’s office has the right to use a consumer protection law to prosecute companies like Chesapeake Energy and Anadarko over royalty payment shenanigans (see 
At some point in the distant past (during our lifetime) swamps got renamed to “wetlands.” Don’t you just love how the left euphemizes everything? Chesapeake Energy is a bad actor when it comes to shafting landowners out of royalties, we’ll grant you that. However, the company must now pay Pennsylvania and the federal government (DOJ and EPA) a combined $1.9 million for “failure to identify and protect wetlands at 76 oil and gas well sites in Pennsylvania.” In other words, failure to protect swamps.
Yesterday we brought you the news that LOLA Energy continues to transform itself with the purchase of what was EdgeMarc Energy’s shale assets in Butler County, PA (see 
LOLA Energy (LOLA stands for 
We’ve written plenty about Shell’s mighty ethane cracker plant project happening in Beaver County, PA. It is one of the biggest construction projects currently underway in the entire country. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit one year ago, the construction site closed down, going from 8,000 workers to a skeleton crew of 300. The way Shell handled the closure, and handled the subsequent reopening, is worth understanding and studying.
Make no mistake–Big Oil companies like Exxon, Chevron, and Shell are not friends of the shale industry. Indeed, these so-called supermajors despise smaller competitors called independents. Which explains why these three companies, along with seven other major oil and gas companies, acted like sycophants in a meeting yesterday, obsequiously bowing before dementia Joe’s attack dog Gina McCarthy in pledging their undying support of a carbon tax that they foolishly believe won’t somehow end up shutting down their own companies. For big, important people, the CEOs of these companies sure can be stupid.
In February 2020, Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary Pat McDonnell sent a letter to the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). McDonnell’s letter alleges Shell’s 97-mile, two-legged Falcon pipeline system that will carry ethane to the mighty Shell cracker plant now under construction in Beaver County, PA, “may have been constructed with defective corrosion coating protection.” It’s an explosive charge just coming to light now, more than a year later.