Chevron Writes Down $5B+ in Marc/Utica Assets, Looks to Sell All
In a bombshell announcement yesterday, Chevron said it is writing down (reducing the paper value) of all its shale assets by $10-$11 billion in the fourth quarter. “More than half” of it is a write-down of its Marcellus/Utica assets. Not only that, but Chevron says it is “evaluating its strategic alternatives for these assets, including divestment.” Translation: Chevron has put its M-U assets, all of them (over 750,000 890,000 acres plus producing wells) up for sale. But the bad news doesn’t stop there.
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Antero Resources is working hard to get the company on sound financial footing. That’s the message we took away from an announcement on Monday from the company that says (a) they’ve asked for and received a break in midstream (pipeline) prices from their own subsidiary, Antero Midstream, and (b) they’re putting some of their considerable Marcellus/Utica assets up for sale, hoping to raise upward of $1 billion.
As it turns out, Exxon didn’t know. You may recall the hue and cry from radical anti-fossil fuelers that #ExxonKnew–knew they were toasting mom earth by extracting and encouraging the burning of oil and natural gas. The New Attorney General’s office launched an investigation, and then a lawsuit, charging the same thing. The NY AG claimed Exxon had defrauded shareholders by covering up knowledge of global warming. The first lawsuit to go to trial against Exxon for causing global warming was in NY, where the AG (Letitia “Tish” James) headed up a disaster of a lawsuit. She (and her office) was thoroughly and completely humiliated by a NY judge who said she never proved anything. Her team’s performance was worse than that of a first-year law student.
This post catches you up on both some old and some new news. In February of this year Chevron signed a lease with the Pennsylvania Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) to lease 1,028.4 acres of land *under* the Monongahela River in Greene and Fayette counties (southwestern corner of the state). That’s the old news. The new news is that Chevron has just added another 235.6 acres to the original lease for a grand total of 1,264.3 acres. Chevron is paying DCNR just over $5 million in lease signing bonuses for the entire deal.
In September, Huntley Energy Exploration (HHEX), a conventional and shale driller headquartered in Southpointe (Washington County), PA that leases land and drills in the Pittsburgh suburbs, changed its name to Olympus Energy (see 
Masquerading as a nonpartisan, independent nonprofit, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) reportedly “conducts research and analyses on financial and economic issues related to energy and the environment.” The Institute’s stated mission is “to accelerate the transition to a diverse, sustainable and profitable energy economy.” In other words, they’re anti-fossil fuels. We spotted an article appearing on OilPrice.com that quotes a new “study” issued by IEEFA. The article opens by saying, “drillers in Appalachia are in particularly bad shape.” Is it true? Is the end near? Is it a shalepocalypse?
In an impressive feat of financial jiu-jitsu, Chesapeake Energy has just snapped closed the mouths of those who said the company was imminently heading for bankruptcy following the company’s third quarter update (see 
What’s the clinical term for a person who intentionally wants to harm him or herself? Self harm? Self injury? Self flagellation? That’s what we call the situation at the NGSA (Natural Gas Supply Association) which yesterday said it supports an economy and shale-killing carbon tax “as a critical pathway to aggressively reducing carbon emissions.” Are they nuts? Have they lost their collective minds?!
MDN previously reported on the rumor that ExxonMobil is sniffing around southwestern Pennsylvania looking for a site to build a multi-billion dollar ethane cracker plant (see 
Here’s something that really bugs us. The Donald J. Trump Administration is doing its best to try and roll back some of the smothering overregulation foisted on the oil and gas industry during the Obama reign of terror. Example: The EPA is looking to reverse direct regulation of oil and gas methane (created by Obama) because the EPA already regulates methane emissions via regulations for volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Yet a few oil “majors” (biggest oil companies in the world) want the EPA to continue its onerous methane regulations. Thing is, the oil majors that want this insane overregulation are NOT American-based companies.
Northeast Natural Energy (NNE) is a small-to-midsized driller headquartered in Morgantown, WV. It’s a young company, drilling its first shale well in 2013. In April 2017 MDN reported that NNE had obtained $300 million of investment from two investment firms (see 
It’s not often we get to blow the trumpet to announce a new (for us anyway) driller that has arrived in the Marcellus/Utica. A trusted source has tipped MDN that Beech Resources has begun to stage a big rig in Lycoming County, PA–the Patterson 343 rig (owned and operated by Patterson-UTI Energy). Who is Beech and where did they come from?
New York’s Attorney General has viciously gone after ExxonMobil in state court hoping to prove the company knew, for years, that burning its oil and gas would lead to so-called man-made global warming and eventually kill the planet. And, says the AG, Exxon covered it up from investors because someday their stock will be worthless when everyone finds out, and they don’t want investors to know about it just yet. The AG is trying to prove the company has engaged in securities fraud–and that case is collapsing, near to having all charges dismissed.
Gulfport Energy, one of the biggest drillers in the Ohio Utica Shale (210,000 acres), concentrates its drilling in the Ohio Utica and the Oklahoma SCOOP plays. Earlier this week the company made a major announcement: They are laying off 13% of the workforce, ending (for now) their stock share buy-back program, and “refreshing” the board with three new members (see 
In February 2015 Rex Energy announced it would sell its Keystone Clearwater Solutions subsidiary which provides water services for shale drillers in the Marcellus/Utica (see 
Last week Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro sat down to talk with the editorial board/reporters of the Washington (PA) Observer-Reporter. He refused to confirm or deny he’s actively conducting a witch hunt of the PA Marcellus Shale industry, including trotting dozens of people before a grand jury–even though the media has been reporting on his grand jury fishing expedition since February (see