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EdgeMarc Energy Files for Bankruptcy, Blames Revolution Pipe
EdgeMarc Energy, headquartered in Canonsburg, PA (with 45,000 acres of Marcellus/Utica leases), is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, looking to sell all of the company’s assets. The reason? They can’t move their production to market because their main pipeline partner, Energy Transfer’s Revolution Pipeline, exploded last September and ET has not been able to get the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection to allow them to restart it.
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The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has just upheld a lower court opinion that allows shale drilling to happen *anywhere* in a township, so long as such drilling satisfies standards to protect public health, safety and welfare. This is the end of the road for a lawsuit funded by Big Green that began in 2015 in Westmoreland County, PA.
The former Blue Ridge Mountain Resources (formerly Magnum Hunter Resources) and Eclipse Resources tied the knot and merged at the end of February, promptly renaming itself Montage Resources (see 
Another day, another episode of the ongoing soap opera that is the power struggle to retain (or take over) control of the country’s largest natural gas producer: EQT. Yesterday we told you about current CEO Rob McNally’s bold and gutsy move in adopting a “universal proxy” and about going on offense with a scorching letter written to Toby Rice (see 
Several members of the Marcellus Shale industry spoke at a meeting of the Williamsport/Lycoming Chamber of Commerce yesterday, including MDN friend George Stark from Cabot Oil & Gas. George is director of external affairs. At the meeting he said the Marcellus industry has made tremendous strides in the last 10 years and will be around for decades to come. He said, “It’s booming in our area.” George also said Cabot is having trouble filling vacant jobs.
In the fight to control EQT, it appears like the momentum has just shifted in favor of EQT’s existing management. No more defense, EQT’s management team and board are now on offense. Yesterday the board and CEO Rob McNally released their list of proposed nominees to be voted on at the annual meeting in July. Three longtime members of the existing board including (surprisingly) board chairman Jim Rohr, will be out. Three new members have been named to replace them. Most important, in a bold move, EQT is adopting a “universal proxy card”–something advocated by Toby and Derek Rice in their attempt to replace the board. We explain this important development below…
Chesapeake Energy CEO Doug Lawler continues his quest to transform what used to be the nation’s second largest natural gas producer into an oil company. Yesterday the company issued its first quarter 2019 update. From that update we learn that Chessy will pull money out of its Marcellus and Haynesville shale gas drilling programs, dropping from three to two rigs in the Marcellus and from two to one rigs in the Haynesville, in order to put more money, rigs, time and effort into the company’s Powder River Basin oil drilling program. We liken their pursuit of oil riches to trying to grab St. Elmo’s Fire–it appears, and as soon as you reach to grab it, it’s gone.
Whew, that was close. We’ve had a concern that if Chevron ended up buying Anadarko Petroleum (for Anadarko’s Permian Basin oil assets), it might lead to Chevron pulling back from their drilling program in the Marcellus/Utica (see 
Saudi Arabia is sniffing around the Marcellus Shale. Bloomberg reports that super secret talks are happening between Saudi Aramco (largest oil company in the world, owned by the Saudi government) and Equinor, which until recently was called Statoil. Equinor is majority-owned by the government of Norway. The Saudis are considering “buying a stake” in or possibly a joint venture with Equinor. It seems Norway is hesitant to hop into bed with the Saudis. We don’t blame them.
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has just fined EQT $330,775 for erosion and sedimentation violations at two well sites in Forward Township, Allegheny County, PA. Water with sediment in it leaked from the well sites in early 2018, which sometimes happens. The reason for the stiff fine is that EQT failed to notify the DEP when it happened. If the DEP finds out via its own inspections first, the cost goes way up.
“In our exploration and production business, even though we achieved our highest ever average daily production rate this past quarter, we were expecting more. It’s a slight disappointment that we modestly lowered the midpoint of our production guidance to the low end of the range that we established last August.” So said National Fuel Gas Company (NFG) CEO Ron Tanski in talking about NFG’s Seneca Resources shale drilling subsidiary on a conference call last Friday.