Empire Energy Owns 300K Marcellus/Utica Acres – Sitting in NY
A press release announcing fourth quarter and full year 2016 results for Empire Energy Group caught our eye. The release talks about assets owned by Empire in the Marcellus/Utica region–specifically in Pennsylvania and New York. When we got digging, we found some interesting information. First off, Empire has operations in both Australia and (primarily) here in the U.S. One interesting observation is that Empire sold some of its considerable leases in Australia to Aubrey McClendon back in 2015 (see McClendon Nearly Triples Australian Shale Deal – 55M Acres!). Here in the U.S., Empire owns leases and wells in both the Midcontinent (Kansas) and in Appalachia (PA & NY). The website for Empire says this on the home page: “Empire Energy Group Limited is an oil and gas exploration and production (E&P) Company focused on onshore long-life oil and gas fields, primarily in the USA. The Company targets producing oil and gas assets with attaching low cost, low risk development acreage. The business strategy is to operate all assets. USA oil and gas operations are managed by an experienced and qualified technical team based in the USA. In addition to production assets, the Company is undertaking an exploration and development program of its extensive oil and gas shale opportunities in New York and Pennsylvania in the USA and The Northern Territory, Australia.” We went nosing some more and found that Empire owns 6,500 acres in NW PA, and 303,000 acres of leases in western NY. Yes, you can see the problem right away. There is no shale drilling in NY. Empire owns land on the wrong side of the border. So while they do have some conventional wells in NY, they don’t have (and won’t have) any shale wells in the Empire State any time soon. So although they advertise they have a presence in the Marcellus–it’s not much of one right now…
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EXCO Resources was once a sizable player in the Marcellus. They still have 145,000 net acres in the Marcellus, with 124 horizontal Marcellus wells drilled and in production. However, EXCO, as we pointed out a year ago, has abandoned the Marcellus at this point (see 
New York’s corrupt Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, is getting desperate. We want to go on record as one of the first to say he’s sowing the seeds of his own destruction. Schneiderman is a train wreck waiting (and about) to happen. We refer, of course, to Schneiderman’s eerie similarity to Captain Ahab in Moby Dick in attempting to hunt down ExxonMobil, Schneiderman’s great white whale. Recently Schneiderman, in cooperation with a sycophantic mainstream media, released information that former CEO Rex Tillerson (now Secretary of State) had a second email account. But unlike Hillary Clinton, Tillerson’s second account was not on a private server and was not used (as Schneiderman alleges) to secretly discuss how Tillerson “knew” burning oil and other fossil fuels causes mythical man-made global warming. Schneiderman’s action in running to the press to “reveal” a “secret” email account is a faint–a way to misdirect people from the real story, which is that Schneiderman continues to refuse to disclose his own emails that prove this whole Exxon witch hunt began when Schneiderman colluded and closely coordinated with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Rockefeller Family Fund, and billionaire green activist Tom Steyer. A log of emails shows coordination just prior to the launch of the #ExxonKnew campaign for which Schneiderman is the point man. He’s desperate to avoid releasing his own emails–emails that will implicate him…
Some 400 business, education and government officials attended a sold-out forum last week in Titusville, PA to hear about doing business with the $6 billion Shell ethane cracker project in Beaver County, PA. The stakes are high. One PA official said, “This is the greatest generational economic development we’ve seen in Pennsylvania, maybe ever.” According to a Louisiana resident involved with crackers in his state, for ever job the Shell cracker creates there will be 8.3 jobs somewhere else–at other companies in the region–to support the plant. It is an incredible opportunity. The question, for businesses in the region, is: How do we get a piece of the cracker pie? We now have an answer–at least in part. If you want to supply goods and services for the construction of the plant, the key is in working with the main contractor building the plant–Bechtel. Below we have details on how to plug in to the Bechtel supply chain system, along with advice for job seekers who want to work at the cracker plant once it’s built…
Last Friday Canadian driller and midstream company Epsilon Energy issued its fourth quarter and full year 2016 update. Epsilon, you may recall, had a shareholder rebellion in 2013 and threw out the sitting board of directors (see 
Earlier this week Rex Energy, a driller focused mainly on the Marcellus/Utica (headquartered in State College, PA), released their fourth quarter and full year 2016 financial update and held an earnings call with analysts to discuss. The company released their operational update back in January (see 
Jim Sewell, the Environmental Manager for the Shell ethane cracker project being built in Beaver County, PA, recently gave an update on the project to members of the Ohio Valley Oil and Gas Association. Sewell spoke about the reason Shell chose the Monaca site. He also gave an update on progress at the site. The biggest problem they’re trying to solve right now? Parking for workers…
When was the last time you heard of someone indicted on criminal charges and instead of doing time in jail, they just paid money? While some crimes involve fines, they always involve jail, or probation, or some form confinement/punishment other than just paying money. At least that’s what we always thought. But if you’re part of the Gestapo, otherwise known as the Environmental Crimes Unit of the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, apparently the rules don’t apply. People in the AG’s office can accuse you of a crime, then shake you down for money, and give that money away to anyone they want. That’s what just happened with Anadarko. As we recently reported (see 
One of our fun pastimes is speculating about when, exactly, the mighty Shell ethane cracker in Beaver County, PA will actually go online. In February, Shell CEO Ben van Beurden said this: “We haven’t announced exactly when it will start up, but expect that to be not anymore this decade” (see 
Statoil, based in Norway, is a big player in the West Virginia Marcellus Shale. Statoil paid property taxes to Brooke, Marshall, Ohio and Wetzel counties (all in WV) in 2015 and later found, during an audit/review, that they had overpaid those counties. They overpaid Brooke by $1.8 million, Ohio by $2.9 million, Wetzel by $1.6 million and Marshall by $342,000 (see 
This is a story that MDN has been watching for years–the transformation (metamorphosis, really) of CONSOL Energy from, at one time, a 100% coal-producing company into a 100% natural gas-producing company. In February MDN reported on the company’s announcement in February to either sell or spin-off the remaining coal assets it owns–this year (see 
Each year the Oil & Gas Awards recognize organizations operating responsibly and supporting the communities they operate within. Now in their 5th year, the Oil & Gas Awards are judged by over 100 senior industry professionals. A gala ceremony was held last Thursday in Pittsburgh to announce the winners. Below is a complete list of the 2017 winners, by category. Congratulations to all of the finalists and winners!…
On Tuesday, Antero Resources, one of the largest and most active drillers in the Marcellus/Utica, issued its 2016 and fourth quarter 2016 update. The company reports net daily production averaged 1,847 million cubic feet equivalent (MMcfe) per day, a whopping 24% increase over 2015 production levels. Digging through the update we found this interesting statistic: It cost Antero an average of $0.84 million per 1,000 feet to drill and complete a Marcellus well, and it cost the company an average of $0.99 million per 1,000 feet to drill and complete a Utica well. Those numbers are 29% and 27% less than a year ago, respectively. The company continues to have some of the best hedging (prices locked in early for the gas they sell) in the business. The company’s natural gas production for 2017 is fully hedged at an average index price of $3.63 per thousand cubic feet (Mcf). The Henry Hub price as this was being written was $2.77/Mcf. Smart! But all was not butterflies and unicorns for Antero in 2016. The company reports losing $849 million in 2016, after making $941 million in 2015. That’s a swing of nearly $2 billion in one year. Ouch. More interesting factoids from the update: Antero plans to average sinking nine wells per pad in the Marcellus, and six wells per pad in the Utica in 2017. Here’s the full update, along with a brand new PowerPoint presentation…