Statoil’s Tax Overpayment Cases Bounced Back to WV County Courts
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. The WV Tax Department argues that Statoil “acted negligently” and exercised “poor judgment” in not finding the mistake sooner. All four counties voted to deny Statoil’s request, so Statoil took them to court, asking the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals to hear the case. However, the Appeals court has just ruled that the cases are not “complex” and don’t require “special treatment,” so back to county court the cases will go…
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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 a presence in the Marcellus/Utica Shale with 90,000 acres of leases. Last year Stone quit drilling in the northeast and actually shut-in part of their production due to low prices (see 
Ultra Petroleum, based in Houston, TX, is an independent exploration and production (E&P) company mainly focused on drilling in the Green River Basin of Wyoming. Ultra also drills for oil in the Uinta Basin/Three Rivers area in Utah. In addition, Ultra maintains a position in the Pennsylvania Marcellus shale with leases on 184,000 gross (91,000 net) acres–no small amount. They aren’t currently drilling on their Marcellus acreage, but if prices change, they likely would. At the end of April Ultra filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (see 
In July MDN reported that the New York Stock Exchange de-listed trading for shares in Atlas Resource Partners (see 
Some of the first businesses that will profit from the mighty Shell ethane cracker being built in Beaver County, PA will be small, local businesses. Restaurants, banquet halls, hotels, drug stores, real estate…the list goes on. But even small businesses that want a piece of the Shell cracker plant action don’t automatically have smooth sailing. Trying to get Shell to promote a business to its workers is hard work. Businesses report talking to Shell and being told that the company won’t help them by promoting them to cracker plant workers (a bit un-neighborly if you ask us). But that’s the life of an entrepreneur. You encounter brick wall after brick wall and you find a way to go through it, or over it, or around it, or under it. That’s what several small businesses in Beaver County are doing with Shell…
It’s about time! A U.S. District Court Judge in Texas recently granted Exxon the right to examine “internal phone records, other communications and depositions” of far-left Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, related to her involvement in attempting to persecute Exxon Mobil for daring to say man-made global warming may not be all it’s cracked up to be (see 
A small Worthington (Franklin County), OH driller, Geopetro, has just purchased 37,000 acres, 27 working shale wells and 5 not-yet-hooked-up wells from Chesapeake Energy for an undisclosed amount of money. The wells are located in Columbiana County, OH and Beaver County, PA. All but one of the wells are Utica wells. One of the wells is drilled to the Upper Devonian layer (above the Marcellus). The purchase is a big deal for the small Geopetro. It converts what until now has been mostly a conventional (shallow, vertical only) drilling company into primarily an unconventional/shale company. Welcome to the shale industry!…
Earlier this week we ran the news that Canadian pipeline giant TransCanada’s plan to radically lower the cost to pipe natural gas from the western regions of Canada to the eastern part of the country, in an effort to undercut Marcellus/Utica gas from flooding into the region, failed (see 
Companies in the oil and gas sector often split the ownership of assets into different companies (on paper) for various reasons: tax purposes…to attract investment…to give us laypeople headaches. CONE Midstream, a joint venture between CONSOL Energy and Noble Energy (CO from CONSOL and NE from Noble Energy) was formed in summer 2014 (see 
Chesapeake Energy, which continues to be strapped financially, embarked on a mission to lighten the debt load years ago–first under co-founder Aubrey McClendon, and then more aggressively under his successor, Doug “the ax” Lawler. Many pieces of the company have been sold off: the Oilfield Services division, all of its Haynesville Shale assets, all of its Barnett Shale assets…we could go on. Chessy loves to do land deals. In December 2014 Chesapeake sold off 413,000 Marcellus acres mostly in West Virginia (see 
In March of this year MDN reported that Ascent Resources–formerly Aubrey McClendon’s American Energy Partners’ Utica Shale company–floated 2.2 billion common units (think shares of stock) to raise $500 million (see 
Rex Energy, the little Marcellus/Utica driller that could, swung things around in the third quarter. Yesterday Rex issued its third quarter update and the company is in the black–earning $5.4 million. No, it’s not much in the o&g world, but it’s a whole lot better than losing $95 million as they did in 3Q15. During 3Q16 Rex drilled 1 Marcellus and 3.5 Utica wells, completed several more wells and brought a variety of wells online in both the Marcellus and Utica. Here’s the full update with details on what Rex did in 3Q16…