Gulfport Energy Sells “Small” Marcellus Leasehold in SE Ohio
Gulfport Energy, one of the biggest drillers in the Ohio Utica Shale (210,000 acres) with record production in the Utica last year, announced last week (as part of its first quarter update) it has sold a “small footprint” of Marcellus drilling rights on some of their Utica acreage in southeastern Ohio for $30 million. Gulfport concentrates its drilling in the Ohio Utica and the Oklahoma SCOOP plays. Piecing together the company’s plans for this year, we’re calling 2019 the “Year of the DUC” for Gulfport.
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Antero Resources, one of the biggest Marcellus/Utica drillers (pure play) released first quarter 2019 numbers yesterday. The Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline, which Antero uses to ship and sell natural gas liquids (NGLs) had a huge beneficial effect for the company. Antero’s production was massive: 3.1 billion cubic feet equivalent per day (Bcfe/d) in 1Q19, up an astonishing 30% from 1Q18. But here’s the kicker: Nearly one-third of Antero’s production (29%) was NGLs. Without ME2, that big number would have been a small fraction of Antero’s production.
This is a “man bites dog” kind of story. Typically when we read about drilling on Pennsylvania state-owned land, the drilling happens on private land adjacent to the state land with the lateral reaching under state land (leased for that purpose). This time we spotted a story about a new well due to be drilled this year in Elk County, PA that sits directly *on* state land, and will reach under private land!
CNX Resources released its first quarter 2019 update yesterday, which shows the company lost $87 million, as opposed to making $527 million in profit in 1Q18. Even so, CEO Nicholas DeIuliis announced the company is upping its drilling budget from the previously announced $700 million to instead spend $885 million, largely to drill more “deep dry” Utica wells. Go big or go home!
Fair or not, anything and everything that happens at EQT right now, which is under extreme pressure by the Rice brothers and several other large shareholders (see 
The money-making Marcellus machine known as Cabot Oil & Gas continues to crank out the hits. On Friday Cabot held a conference call to discuss the company’s first quarter 2019 performance. And wow! What a performance! The company made $308 million in net income/profit (up 141% from $128 million in 1Q18), and produced 2.3 billion cubic feet per day equivalent (Bcfe/d) of mostly Marcellus (little bit of Haynesville) gas, up 21% from 1Q18.
Southwestern Energy, one of the largest drillers in the Marcellus with 480,000 acres under lease, turned in their first quarter 2019 update last week. It was the company’s first update since becoming a pure play operator, totally focused on the Marcellus/Utica region. What did it show? Net income nearly tripled to $594 million (vs. 1Q18’s $205 million). Production averaged 2.0 billion cubic feet equivalent per day (Bcfe/d), close to what the prolific Cabot produced in 1Q19.
An interesting development in the bidding war to buy Anadarko Petroleum. Two weeks ago Chevron announced a deal to buy Anadarko Petroleum for $33 billion plus assuming outstanding debt, a deal worth $50 billion (see 
Two days ago EQT issued its first quarter 2019 update. Yesterday they held a conference call to discuss the company’s performance. EQT performed better in 1Q19 both financially and operationally than it did in 1Q18. What most caught our interest were CEO Rob McNally’s remarks, both his prepared remarks at the beginning of the conference call, and his unscripted remarks during the Q&A. We gained some important insights on where and how much EQT plans to drill for the balance of 2019.
In addition to EQT’s 1Q19 update yesterday, Toby and Derek Rice filed a lawsuit against EQT, alleging the company is trying to confuse shareholders by requiring some of board candidates the Rice boys are proposing get commingled with EQT’s own slate of candidates. The Rice boys say the lawsuit is aimed at “preventing EQT from manipulating shareholder election.” The Rices want to elect their own board, tossing out the existing board and following that, tossing out EQT’s current senior management.
Less than two weeks ago Chevron announced a deal to buy Anadarko Petroleum for $33 billion plus assuming outstanding debt, a deal worth $50 billion (see 
On Monday, Toby and Derek Rice filed a proxy statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission and sent EQT shareholders a package and special proxy card (for voting) in an effort to elicit votes for their slate of nine board members at the upcoming July annual meeting–so they can take control of the company. Normally proxy statements are pretty dry affairs. Not this one! There are bombshell accusations in the proxy statement made by the Rice boys against EQT’s current management.
Range Resources issued its first quarter 2019 update earlier this week. Natural gas liquids (NGLs) were one of the themes of the update and analyst phone call–and no wonder why. The company produced an average of 2.26 billion cubic feet equivalent per day (Bcfe/d) of natural gas in 1Q19, nearly one-third (31%) of which was NGLs. Ethane and propane, getting them to market, is a major focus for Range.
Bechtel, a huge multi-national engineering firm, is the company building the mighty Shell ethane cracker in Monaca, PA. Shell won’t divulge when they think the cracker will be up and running (still a year or more away), but in what we consider a very good sign that the cracker will be operating sooner rather than later, Shell has just awarded another huge multi-national engineering firm, AECOM, the contract to maintain all the machinery at the cracker plant once it’s built and running.
In August 2017 Range Resources and the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) officially settled alleged methane migration from a well Range drilled in 2011 in Lycoming County, PA (see