Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Lease & Royalty Payments | Pennsylvania | Pipelines | Repsol | Tioga County (PA)
Tioga County, PA Leased Landowners Lose Case to Block Gathering Pipe
Last Friday a federal judge in Pennsylvania rejected arguments from three Tioga County, PA landowners who claimed Marcellus driller Repsol did not have a right to install a gathering pipeline across their property. The landowners leased their property for oil and gas development and their property now flows gas, for which they’re paid royalties. Even so, the landowners claim Repsol does not have the right to build a pipeline because it flows gas from other properties not part of their unit. Like all lawsuits, this one is complicated, but instructive for landowners (and drillers) when it comes to pipelines and leases.
Read More “Tioga County, PA Leased Landowners Lose Case to Block Gathering Pipe”
In mid-May the nation’s largest natural gas producer, EQT Corporation, temporarily shut-in (curtailed) roughly one-third of its natural gas production in Pennsylvania and Ohio (see 
Pin Oak Midstream, a subsidiary of Pin Oak Energy Partners, a relatively young Marcellus/Utica driller based in Akron, OH, has purchased most of the pipeline assets of Laurel Mountain Midstream for an undisclosed amount. The assets include 1,050 miles of natural gas-gathering pipelines and five compressor stations located in three Pennsylvania counties.
S&P Global Market Intelligence has done some forensic analysis of permits issued to drill new shale wells in Pennsylvania during August 2020. They compared last month’s permit numbers with the numbers from a year ago and found that PA issued 77 new permits last month, down 24% from August 2019.
Back in 2012 Gulfport Energy drilled a pair of exceptional Utica wells in Belmont County, Ohio–both on the same pad. The first was the Shugert 1-1H which had an initial production (IP) rate of 20 million cubic feet of natural gas per day (Mmcf/d). It also produced an initial 144 barrels of condensate per day, and 2,002 barrels of natural gas liquids per day (see 
We don’t often see news about a Marcellus producer called Alta Resources. Alta was one of the first drillers we wrote about just after launching the MDN website back in 2009 (see 
Oil and gas drilling giant Equinor (formerly called Statoil) is owned by the Norwegian government. Equinor/Statoil has drilled in the Marcellus/Utica for years. As recently as June 2019 the company reported drilling 9-14 Utica wells per year (see 
Range Resources issued its annual Corporate Sustainability Report (CSR) this morning (full copy below). The report lays out the company’s performance on key issues. It also sets so-called greenhouse gas reduction targets. Of particular note, Range has set a target to achieve net-zero emissions by 2025. If they do, they would be the first oil and gas company to achieve a net-zero threshold by 2025–less than five years from now.
CNX was fracking their Shaw 1G Utica well in Washington Township (Westmoreland County) in early 2019 when they detected “a strong drop in pressure” and stopped fracking (see 
Pittsburgh-based IntegrServ, a trucking company partly owned by former Pittsburgh Steeler Jerome Bettis, filed a federal lawsuit yesterday against EQT claiming discrimination against the company as a minority-owned company after it canceled a contract worth some $66 million last year. This is an involved story and of course, there are always two sides to every story (and two sides to every lawsuit).
Peregrine Energy Partners, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, continues a program to buy royalty rights in the Marcellus/Utica. Peregrine announced yesterday the company has cut a deal to buy “producing royalties in Doddridge County, West Virginia from several private sellers.” The private sellers are landowners/rights owners with wells drilled by Antero Resources and Jay-Bee Oil & Gas. No details on how much the deal was for.
Last week we brought you the bombshell news that Southwestern Energy is buying out and merging in Montage Resources in an all-stock deal worth roughly $857 million (see 
Range Resources is running up the debt tab. In January the company issued $550 million in new notes (debt, IOUs) which they used to turn around and pay down older notes (see