Antero Resources 2018 – $398M Loss, Production Up 20%
Antero Resources, one of the biggest drillers in the Marcellus/Utica region (focused on wet gas drilling), released its full year and fourth quarter 2018 update last week. The company reports 2018 daily gas equivalent production averaged a record 2.7 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d)–up 20% over 2017. 4Q18 production averaged 3.2 Bcf/d, up 37% over 4Q17 (and up 18% from 4Q18). However, the company’s financial performance wasn’t as stellar.
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From time to time we check in on Epsilon Energy, which concentrates most of its effort on the Marcellus in Susquehanna County, PA. The former Canadian company decided to “domesticate” itself, moving headquarters from Canada to Houston, TX last summer (see 
CNX was fracking their Shaw 1G Utica well in Washington Township (Westmoreland County) on Saturday, Jan. 26, when they detected “a strong drop in pressure” and stopped fracking (see 
On Tuesday EQT filed lawsuits in both Pennsylvania and federal courts against two former employees it had fired, claiming the employees, before they were fired (sensing it was coming) had systematically copied confidential information from company computers and took it with them when they left.
Last November Encino Acquisition Partners (i.e. Encino Energy) completed its purchase of all of Chesapeake Energy’s Ohio Utica Shale assets for $2 billion (see 
UK oil and gas giant BP recently released its 2019 edition of their BP Energy Outlook. As they do each year, BP predicts renewable energy sources will continue to grow. However, the inescapable conclusion you get from this latest report is that LNG (liquefied natural gas) will play a staring role in the energy picture over the next 20 years. Not only that, but LNG coming from the U.S. is will receive the best actor award.
It’s been a while, quite a while, since we’ve heard anything from or about EV Energy Partners, which renamed itself to Harvest Oil & Gas after exiting bankruptcy last June (see 
A drilling team with experience drilling more than 1,000 Marcellus shale wells in Pennsylvania with laterals from 1,500 feet to 11,000 feet recently published a research paper looking at best practices and what it will take to routinely drill wells with laterals longer than 18,000 feet.
EQT released its fourth quarter and full year 2018 update yesterday. The numbers show the company lost, on paper, $2.2 billion–but the loss was from “impairments,” writing off the value of old assets they had sold. Not an actual $2.2B out-of-pocket loss. The company, which is the largest natural gas producer in the U.S., produced 1.49 trillion cubic feet equivalent of gas in 2018, up an incredible 68% from the 888 billion cubic feet produced in 2017.
Eclipse Resources, which is about to be merged with Blue Ridge Mountain Resources (the old Magnum Hunter Resources), just posted its fourth quarter and full year production results, along with 2018 proved reserves numbers. The update is short and not-so-sweet.
Earlier this month Toby and Derek Rice, formerly executives with Rice Energy (before it sold to EQT), launched a proxy war to nominate board members who will appoint Toby CEO of EQT (see 
Last week ExxonMobil and Qatar Petroleum announced a final investment decision (FID) to build Golden Pass LNG terminal, on the Texas side of the Sabine-Neches Waterway. That’s a stone’s throw from Cheneire Energy’s Sabine Pass LNG terminal on the Louisiana side of the waterway. Marcellus/Utica gas flows to the Cheniere facility. Will it also flow to Exxon’s when it’s built?
Yesterday MDN began our lead story about a big fine for Antero Resources by saying, “This has to be a record-high amount for a fine plus remediation work, at least in the Marcellus/Utica.” We humbly admit we were wrong. In checking our records, we found that in a similar case from 2014, Trans Energy paid even more, quite a bit more. We researched what this whole business is about, why Antero and others were fined, interviewing a top Antero official, and we now have a far better understanding of what happened and why.
In 2013 some 10,000 West Virginia landowners/rights owners filed a class action lawsuit against EQT over their practice of post-production deductions from royalty checks. The lawsuit was scheduled to go to trial last November, but at the last minute, it didn’t. Word leaked that EQT had settled out of court (see