Poison Pill Worked? Gulfport Big Investor Withdraws Board Picks
As recently as early March Gulfport Energy, a major driller in the Ohio Utica Shale, and its single largest investor, Firefly Value Partners (owns 13.1% of outstanding shares), were sniping at each other. Firefly was actively trying to pack the board of directors with its own nominees (see Gulfport’s Largest Investor Wants to Pack Board, Force Change). Two days ago Firefly announced a ceasefire. They will no longer attempt to get their own candidates elected to the board at the upcoming annual meeting. What changed?
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In April, Montage Resources shut-in “low margin production” wells in its liquids-rich producing area. The shut-ins primarily impacted Utica condensate production. In early May during the company’s first-quarter update conference call, CEO John Reinhart said the company had begun to restart some of the shut-in or “curtailed” production (see 
CNX Resources announced yesterday that it will buy back $400 million (roughly half) of its outstanding notes, debt that’s not due to be redeemed until 2022. They’re buying it back early. The company’s finances continue to get stronger. It was just February when Standard & Poor’s Global Ratings downgraded the credit rating for six of the biggest M-U drillers, including CNX (see 
Gulfport Energy, the third-largest (by number wells drilled) producer in the Ohio Utica Shale, issued an update yesterday to its previous plans on drilling in the Ohio Utica (and Oklahoma SCOOP), revising down the amount of natural gas it will produce and revising down drilling activity previously planned for 2020. The company says it will delay until later this year/early next year more of its production than previously announced–due to ongoing low prices for natgas.
On Wednesday 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. The law the AG’s office wants to use has never been used that way before. According to legal experts, drillers are very concerned if the AG’s office wins this one, as we reported last November (see 
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 
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 (
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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.