Crawford County | Energy Companies | Mercer County | Pennsylvania | Pin Oak Energy Partners | Rockdale | Shell | SWEPI | Tioga County (PA) | Venango County
Shell Sells NWPA Assets, Possibly Tioga County Assets Too
MDN recently received a hot tip from a reader that says Shell (i.e. SWEPI) may have recently sold its Tioga County, PA assets in northcentral PA. Yesterday, Pin Oak Energy issued a press release to say they have cut a deal to buy Shell’s northwestern PA assets, some 43,000 acres in the Utica. Which all feeds into the rumor we shared with you last November that Shell is pulling out of PA drilling (see Is Shell Pulling Out of Pennsylvania Marcellus?).
4/9/19: See important update below provided by Shell
Read More “Shell Sells NWPA Assets, Possibly Tioga County Assets Too”
A notable development in a lawsuit that before now, we were unaware of. Several landowners in Venango County (northwest PA) filed a lawsuit against Shell’s SWEPI drilling subsidiary in 2013 claiming SWEPI had stiffed them out of lease bonus payments due under duly signed lease contracts. The landowners attempted to turn the lawsuit into a class action, claiming the same thing had happened for about 300 leases in the area. A federal judge has just ruled against converting the lawsuit into a class action.
A second lawsuit we’re reporting on today that had previously slipped by our usually good radar. A former Cabot Oil & Gas employee filed a lawsuit in October 2017 alleging that he and a number of other “employees” had been stiffed out of overtime payments by Cabot–that Cabot had treated them as independent contractors rather than as employees. The lawsuit was granted class certification.
We read on a regular basis in mainstream media that shale companies spend more money than they bring in, and that investors are growing tired of pumping money into companies without a return on their investment. We’ve recently noticed a renewed commitment on the part of major drillers to get their financial houses in order–spend less and drill less in order to make more money. We spotted an article by Reuters on the “shale drillers aren’t profitable/healthy” meme which got us investigating the financial health (or lack thereof) for Marcellus/Utica drillers. What we found may interest you.
Shale driller Huntley & Huntley, headquartered in Monroeville (Allegheny County), PA drilled at least one well last year in the Pittsburgh suburb of Plum (also in Allegheny County). According to a landowner living nearby, H&H’s drilling and fracking of the Midas 8M well led to their water well becoming fouled. H&H disputes the claim.
Pennsylvania towns that pass sketchy local ordinances that skirt state laws are on notice: It’s going to cost you. Big. For the past several years we’ve reported on the case of Grant Township, PA that passed an ordinance cooked up by the radical Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) to try and block a state-approved injection well. The ordinance was tossed by a judge, and now the town will have to pay $102,000 in legal fees incurred by the operator.
Diversified Gas & Oil has been on a mission to buy as many non-shale (conventional) oil and gas wells as it can in the Appalachian Basin. It owns close to 3 million acres of leases with some 60,000 (mostly) conventional oil and gas wells. That’s changing. Yesterday Diversified announced it has cut a deal to buy 107 operating (and 3 non-operating) shale wells in Pennsylvania and West Virginia for $400 million.
Last night people opposed to drilling a few wells at the U.S. Steel Edgar Thomson Plant in a Pittsburgh suburb turned up to complain that somehow a noisy, air-polluting steel plant will be made even nosier and more polluting by drilling a few shale wells on the property. It’s an absurd position to argue, but there you go.
The proxy war between Toby and Derek Rice and current management at EQT continues. It’s now turned into a press release war. Every few days one or the other (or both) sides issue press releases to try and convince shareholders *their* side is the winning/righteous/justified side in this war. Yesterday EQT fired off another round by issuing a press release to announce the release of a new PowerPoint slide deck.
A full-blown war is on for the future of EQT. Yesterday Toby and Derek Rice released a proposed slate of EQT board members they want elected at the next annual meeting on July 10th. They propose replacing all existing board members–except for their brother Dan. The Rice boys say it’s necessary to have a board who is “with it” (our words) and will back up Toby and Derek as they take control of the company. On the other hand, current EQT board chairman Jim Rohr and board member/CEO Rob McNally are pushing back. It’s a fight to the “death” (figuratively speaking).
Yesterday Ascent Resources, a company founded by Aubrey McClendon after he left Chesapeake Energy, issued a (very) brief recap of what happened in 2018, and a look ahead (“guidance”) at what the company expects to accomplish in 2019. The update is brief–cherry-picking highlights to share–because it can be. Ascent’s stock is not publicly traded, so they don’t have to provide full financial updates (except to their investors). Ascent is a big and important driller in the Utica, so *any* information they share is useful and of interest.
Next Wednesday the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection will hold a public hearing on plans to drill a shale well(s) on the property of U.S. Steel Corporation’s Edgar Thomson Plant in a Pittsburgh suburb. What’s so unusual about the well(s) is that U.S. Steel itself will be “the sole consumer of the natural gas extracted.” That is, U.S. Steel will use the gas to power/feed the steel plant.
Penn Virginia, an oil and gas driller headquartered in Radnor, PA (near Philadelphia) announced last October it had found someone to buy the company–Denbury Resources (see 
We’re not quite sure what to make of this. In February, EQT filed lawsuits in both Pennsylvania and federal courts against two former employees it had fired, claiming the employees, before they were fired, had systematically copied confidential information from company computers and took it with them when they left (see