EQT Provides More Details on DGO Asset Sale, 1.4 Bcf/d Curtailment
EQT announced yesterday it has closed on a deal to sell “certain non-strategic assets” to Diversified Gas & Oil (DGO) for $125 million, plus another potential $20 million later on. MDN first told you about this deal on May 13 (see Diversified Buys 900 EQT Wells (67 Shale Wells) for $125M). This is the first time EQT has commented publicly on the DGO deal. EQT’s statement differs from previous news accounts about the deal.
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We have a confession. We have a man crush on Nick DeIuliis, CEO of CNX Resources. Beginning last year DeIuliis began to publicly and openly fight back against global warming zealots who demand you bow before the altar of man-made global warming or risk being ostracized from polite society. The warmists are irrational fossil fuel haters–dedicated to eliminating the use of fossil fuels. DeIuliis has had enough and he now regularly says so in public forums. The latest example of DeIuliis pushing back is a column appearing today in The Hill, the Washington, DC uber-insider publication. DeIuliis says the pandemic has exposed the “church of climate” and the “dog’s breakfast of special interest groups” that compose it, for the fraud it is.
Chesapeake Energy keeps winning Ohio royalty lawsuits in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. In March the company beat a lawsuit by a group of Ohio landowners who claimed Chessy had cheated them out of a collective $30 million in royalties (see
On October 3, 2016, landowner James Slamon filed a lawsuit against Carrizo and Reliance Industries in the Susquehanna County (PA) Court of Common Pleas. Slamon alleged Carrizo and Reliance underpaid royalties on oil and gas leases to him and a class of other landowners “exceeding one hundred members.” The drillers got the case moved to federal court on October 31, 2016. Fast forward to this past Monday and a judge in the federal court case has certified (in part) the class-action request. The lawsuit will now move forward.
MDN recently brought you Epislon Energy’s first-quarter 2020 update (see
The nation’s largest natural gas producer, EQT Corporation, is temporarily curtailing or shutting in roughly one-third of its natural gas production in Pennsylvania and Ohio. So says EQT’s main midstream (pipeline) provider, Equitrans (formerly EQT Midstream).
Pieridae Energy wants to build an LNG export plant in Nova Scotia, Canada. The project is called the Goldboro LNG project. We’ve tracked the project for years hoping Marcellus/Utica gas might one day feed it (
Wow! What a difference three months can make. In January Moody’s Investors Service downgraded EQT Corporation’s bonds to “junk” status (see
Shell continues to ramp back up work being done at its mighty ethane cracker construction site in Beaver County, PA following a shutdown of activity due to the coronavirus pandemic. The company has announced plans to add 300 employees back each week until they are back up to full compliment.
From time to time we check in on Epsilon Energy, which concentrates most of its effort on the Marcellus in Susquehanna County, PA. Does Epsilon actually do any of its own drilling? No. They partner with (give money to) other companies, like Chesapeake Energy, and the other companies do the actual drilling. Epsilon, according to its website, owns ~4,000 net acres in the PA Marcellus. Epsilon issued its first-quarter 2020 update yesterday.
A leftist anti-fossil group calling itself Protect PT, in Penn Township (Westmoreland County), PA, backed with big money from Big Green groups, has for years challenged Penn Township ordinances that allow Apex Energy and Huntley & Huntley (now Olympus Energy) to drill and operate shale wells. Protect PT has finally struck out, permanently, at the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
ECA Marcellus Trust I announced yesterday that there will be no distribution (dividend) paid for investors for first-quarter 2020 because expenses exceeded net revenues. Who is ECA Marcellus?
Have Marcellus/Utica drillers learned their lesson about growth at any cost? It seems the answer to that is, YES! The price of natural gas has been low for a long time due to overproduction. You’ve often read here on MDN that gas prices will be “lower for longer.” And yet with the coronavirus pandemic and the crash in oil prices, the price of natgas has been (mostly) inching up–getting close to $2/Mcf (although it was down again yesterday, to $1.62/Mcf). Estimates for gas prices next year are trending to the $2.50-$2.75 range. Everyone is watching–will M-U and other gas-focused drillers restart big spending and more drilling?
Diversified Gas & Oil (DGO) continues its program of buying up mostly older conventional oil and gas wells in Appalachia. In April DGO cut a deal to buy 6,500 conventional wells spread across West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, along with a 4,700-mile gathering pipeline system located in WV, for $110 million (see
Chesapeake Energy issued its first-quarter 2020 update yesterday–but not in the typical fashion. They filed the required Form 10-Q with the Securities and Exchange Commission and announced they will not hold a conference call or webcast to discuss anything with anyone. No wonder. The financials for the company are dreadful. Chesapeake lost (on paper) $8.3 billion in 1Q20 due to the writedown of assets (called an impairment). It was not an out-of-pocket-cash loss, thank God. Still, it was bad enough. The 10-Q said “management has concluded that there is substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern” and there is a “likelihood of a restructuring or reorganization.”