Potter Twp Declines to Approve Permits for Shell Cracker, For Now
The Potter Township Board of Supervisors convened a public hearing on Tuesday afternoon at 3 pm that ended up going until 1 am Wednesday. The intent was to approve Shell’s request for permits to begin construction on the multi-billion dollar ethane cracker plant. That didn’t happen. Instead, the supervisors decided to hold another hearing Wednesday night. They did, and that hearing went for over an hour, in closed-door session. At the conclusion, the supervisors made a couple of requests from Shell, which Shell agreed to. However, the supervisors are still not ready to approve the permits and instead asked for more paperwork to be filed–by both Shell and the radical, anti-fossil fuel Big Green group Clean Air Council (from Philadelphia). It seems the antis are attempting to stop this project cold–which should have the good citizens of Beaver County (indeed the entire northeast) outraged. At any rate, we’re sure the permits will be forthcoming–but now it won’t happen until sometime in January…
Read More “Potter Twp Declines to Approve Permits for Shell Cracker, For Now”

Stone Energy, an independent oil and natural gas exploration and production company (E&P) headquartered in Lafayette, Louisiana drills mainly in the Gulf of Mexico but also has (or rather had) a presence in the Marcellus/Utica Shale with 90,000 acres of leases. In October Stone announced (a) it is selling its Marcellus/Utica assets to Tug Hill for $350 million, and (b) the company is preparing to file for bankruptcy (see
Gulfport Energy is an Oklahoma City-based independent oil and natural gas exploration and production company (“driller”) with its main operations in the Utica Shale of eastern Ohio and along the Louisiana Gulf Coast. Gulfport is considered one of the Top 5 Utica drillers (see 
Rex Energy, a driller focused mainly on the Marcellus/Utica (headquartered in State College, PA), has had its share of financial challenges. It has swapped out IOUs for new IOUs, converted debt into equity (shares of stock), sold off assets in other basins–a whole lotta stuff to keep on drilling (
We’re sure you haven’t missed the news that President-Elect Donald Trump (we love saying those words!) has nominated current Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson (T-Rex for short) to become the next Secretary of State–and fourth in line to the presidency. Tillerson is a great pick, for many reasons. He’s been doing deals in some 50 countries across the planet, dealing with some nasty customers during that time. T-Rex knows how to get things done–and he knows how to be a diplomat. He deals from a position of strength, not of weakness as our current SecState (John Kerry) and previous SecState (Hillary Clinton) have done. T-Rex will command attention and respect across the planet. And he’s a oil guy to boot–how great is that! Equally great news is Trump’s pick to run the Dept. of Energy–former Texas Gov. Rick Perry. We’ve always liked Rick (we supported him over Romney in 2012). Perry was the longest-serving governor of Texas, the biggest oil producing state in the country. He knows oil and gas, and he knows how to lead. What a breath of fresh air! Here’s some background on Trumps two key picks who have deep o&g experience…
EQT is feeling bullish about natural gas drilling in the northeast for 2017. The company has just released its 2017 operational forecast. What do we notice? First off, they plan to spend $1.5 billion next year, most of which ($1.3 billion) will be used to drill and complete new wells. That’s a whopping 50% increase from spending $1 billion this year. The next thing we notice is what type of wells they intend to drill: 119 Marcellus wells (76 in PA and 43 in WV); 81 Upper Devonian wells, which will be drilled on the same pads as deeper Marcellus wells, but only in PA; and 7 “deep Utica” exploratory wells. EQT also reworked a midstream deal with Williams in the Ohio Valley. Below are the exciting details of what’s ahead for EQT in 2017, including a second announcement from EQT Midstream about what’s ahead for the pipeline subsidiary, including details on how much they plan to spend on the Mountain Valley pipeline project in the coming year…
Antero Resources, one of the biggest drillers in the Marcellus, is going shopping for cash. In September Antero’s midstream (i.e. pipeline) subsidiary went shopping for cash and got $650 million (see
Richard Zeits is an oil and gas, commodities, and long/short equity research analyst. He writes on the Seeking Alpha website and is, without a doubt, the best writer we read on o&g matters on the SA website. So when we spotted an article he’s written about Chesapeake Energy, that its “distress risk” (i.e. bankruptcy) is now “remote”–we took notice. It wasn’t long ago that many were betting the company would declare bankruptcy (see
It’s certainly not THE highest, but it is certainly one of the highest fines we’ve seen assessed by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). Yesterday the DEP fined Rice Energy $3.5 million “for multiple violations of environmental laws at 10 well sites and 6 pipeline locations.” The violations, spanning “several years,” occurred at sites in Washington and Greene counties. Here’s the details…
Chesapeake Energy is leveraged up to its neck with elaborate loans up loans and notes (IOUs) upon notes. We don’t know how they keep it all straight. Must take an entire department full of CPAs to track it all. No doubt the CPAs escaped CEO Doug Lawler’s ax when he was chopping 1,500 jobs from the company (see
PDC Energy, a driller in the Wattenberg Field in Colorado and the Utica in Ohio, paused their Utica drilling program in 2015 (see
Pipelines are the safest form of transportation on the planet–bar none. Everyone knows it. But anti-fossil fuel radicals attempt to lie about the safety of pipelines in an attempt to get projects canceled–a tactic in their war on fossil fuels. They know as well as anyone that pipelines are perfectly safe, so they lie about safety to try and stop projects. Like the $3.5 billion Mountain Valley Pipeline and the $5 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline–both critically important projects in the Marcellus/Utica. Note their language in opposing such projects. The aim is not to re-route the projects, but to kill them altogether. There is no reasoning with un-reasonable people like those who are members of the Allegheny-Blue Ridge Alliance, a small group of anti-fossil fuel radicals…
For some time we’ve followed the story of Range Resources and their (former) wastewater impoundments in Washington County, PA. The PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) fined Range a whopping $4.15 million for violations in September 2014 (see