Ultra Petroleum Gets 67% Debtholders to Agree to Bankruptcy Plan
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 Ultra Petroleum (with 184K Marcellus Acres) Files for Bankruptcy). Shareholders tried to get an official equity committee approved to protect their interest (see Update on Ultra Petroleum Bankruptcy). That effort failed–the trustee denied the motion. So equity holders (stockholders), with the aid of Ultra’s management (who happen to be stockholders themselves) adopted a new strategy: wait them out. Management asked for an extension to file their bankruptcy plan, which would put a plan filing date out to next spring (see Ultra Petroleum Trying to Force Debtholders to Deal re Bankruptcy). It seems that management is using time against debtholders as a tactic to force them to the table to deal–and they’ve now done it. Ultra announced last week it has a deal supported by a full two-thirds of outstanding debtholders and plans to move forward. Unlike other o&g companies forced into bankruptcy, Ultra is not wiping out existing shareholders under their restructuring deal…
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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…
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 
National Fuel Gas Company (NFG) covers the full span of the oil and gas business–from upstream (with its wholly-owned drilling subsidiary Seneca Resources), to the midstream (with wholly-owned subsidiary Empire Pipeline) to downstream (NFG’s natural gas utility service to 740,000 customers in NY and PA). Big company. Diverse operations. Late last week NFG issued what they call their fourth quarter update (everyone else’s third quarter update), covering July through September. NFG’s CEO Ronald Tanski said lower natural gas prices and higher temperatures didn’t help. However, the company improved. In NFG’s 4Q15 the company lost $188 million–but this year they made $37.5 million. That’s a significant $225 million improvement in just one year’s time. However, NFG ended the full year in the red–losing $291 million (an improvement from losing $379 million last year). As for Seneca’s performance, it was a good year overall, with banner production. Seneca’s production was 161.1 Bcfe (billion cubic feet equivalent) in fiscal 2016, an increase of 3.3 Bcfe, or 2%, versus fiscal 2015. Seneca voluntarily curtailed an estimated 34.6 Bcf (billion cubic feet) of net natural gas production in fiscal 2016. Seneca’s average realized natural gas and oil prices, after the impact of hedging, was $3.02 per Mcf and $57.91 per Bbl, respectively, a decrease of $0.36 per Mcf and $12.45 per Bbl, versus fiscal 2015. Below is the NFG update for all of their subsidiaries including Seneca and Empire, along with a copy of the latest PowerPoint slide deck…
CONE Midstream, a joint venture between CONSOL Energy and Noble Energy (get it? CO from CONSOL and NE from Noble Energy) was formed in summer 2014 (see