Diversified Gas & Oil Buys 5 Utica Shale Wells in Monroe County, OH
Diversified Gas & Oil (DGO) owns close to 8 million acres of leases with some 60,000 (mostly) conventional oil and gas wells. Their focus has been to acquire quality production and cash flow–regardless of the well or commodity type (gas or oil)–in the Appalachian Basin. DGO currently owns over 400 Marcellus/Utica shale wells in their portfolio too. The company just added to their inventory of shale wells, closing on the purchase of five Utica Shale wells in Monroe County, OH. The purchase price for all five? $8.4 million.
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For the second week in a row, two of three M-U drilling states received permits to drill new shale wells. Pennsylvania scored 10 permits to drill new shale wells last week. Ohio received no new permits for Utica wells (second dry week in row). West Virginia received 4 new permits to drill new shale wells last week.
It was exactly one year ago that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in THE most consequential lawsuit for Marcellus Shale drilling we’ve seen, a case called Briggs v Southwestern Energy (see 
We’ve noticed a flurry of new “notes” (i.e. bonds) being offered by Marcellus/Utica companies. We call notes/bonds IOUs. Typically a company will issue new notes (a promise to pay in the future, with interest) in order to retire older notes coming due. Notes are a form of self-financing by using debt instead of issuing new shares of stock (diluting existing shares). M-U drillers Range Resources and Antero Resources both quickly sold out of their recent note offerings at higher prices than originally requested. According to S&P analysts, the Range and Antero fast sellout is proof that credit is loosening for drillers in the M-U and in other shale plays.
EQT Corporation, the largest natural gas producer in the United States, is asking West Virginia officials to remove two judges from hearing cases brought by landowners against the EQT relating to royalty disputes for alleged improper deductions. EQT wants Judges Timothy Sweeney and David W. Hummel Jr. to be disqualified from at least three cases (that we know of).
It’s been a long road, but we’re nearing the end. Shell’s $6 billion ethane cracker plant, officially called the Pennsylvania Petrochemicals Complex (PPC), is close to being done. It’s likely the PPC, located in Beaver County, PA, will be up and running sometime next year. When it is, the market for Marcellus/Utica NGLs will profoundly change. PPC will use an average of 85,000 barrels per day of M-U ethane. Our ethane will no longer be a waste product that many drillers pay to get rid of, but rather a profitable product they sell.
Over the objections of a junior creditor group, a judge for the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston said yesterday he will approve Chesapeake Energy’s bankruptcy plan to jettison $7 billion (out of $8.9 billion) worth of debt. Chesapeake will exit bankruptcy within the next 30 days and will continue to retain and drill on its Marcellus Shale assets in northeastern Pennsylvania.
In a pair of announcements earlier this week, U.S. Well Services announced it has signed new long-term deals with both Range Resources and EQT to supply “electric fracking” services. We told you in February 2020 that Range had signed on with U.S. Well Services to continue using its electric fracking service (see 
The Community College of Beaver County’s (CCBC) Shell Center for Process Technology, a $5 million state-of-the-art training facility, has just officially opened. While the Center was built to train employees to run the Shell ethane cracker plant, it’s also training people for a myriad of other opportunities too.
Late last week Shell shut down all work at its ethane cracker plant site in Monaca (Beaver County), PA to test workers for COVID-19. After testing roughly 7,400 (out of 7,950) workers Shell found 141 positive results, or 1.9%. Workers began returning to the site on Wednesday.