Halcon’s Market Cap Falls Below $50M, NYSE Threatens to De-List
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) has certain minimum standards if a company wants to continue trading stocks on the exchange: The company’s stock price must be trading for at least $1 per share, and the company’s market capitalization must be at least $50 million. Market cap is pretty easy to calculate: it’s the number of outstanding shares times the per-share price. If you have 50 million shares of stock and the price is trading for $1/share, you’re there. You meet the NYSE’s requirements. Various companies with operations in the Marcellus/Utica have fallen short and have been warned by the NYSE that unless they get their act together, they would be de-listed. Some turned it around (see Eclipse Resources Dodges a Bullet – Stock Won’t Get De-Listed), and some didn’t (see Magnum Hunter De-Listed from NYSE; Still Shopping Eureka Hunter). Halcon Resources, a driller with 140,000 Utica acres it doesn’t bother to drill on, was warned in June by the NYSE that their share price, trading under $1/share, is too low (see NYSE Threatens Halcon Resources with De-Listing of Stock). In July Halcon filed for bankruptcy (see Halcon Resources Files for “Pre-Packaged” Bankruptcy). The NYSE has just issued another warning to Halcon: the company’s market capitalization has now fallen below $50 million…
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There is a new development in the case of an illegal ban on injection wells passed by Highland Township in Elk County, PA. In 2013 the radical leftist PA-based group Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) convinced ignoramuses in Highland Township to pass a so-called Community Bill of Rights. Seneca Resources, a driller with leases and an active drilling program in Elk, had planned to drill an injection well on their own property to dispose of their own flowback and produced water. The CELDF-inspired ordinance Highland Twp prevented it, and Seneca threatened to sue the town (see 
Brooke County, WV makes it four for four in denying Statoil’s request to refund tax overpayments made by the company. 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. We previously reported on Marshall’s refusal to refund the money (see 
We sometimes run Top 10 lists for the Marcellus/Utica, or even the U.S., but what about a Top 10 list of natural gas producers in the entire world? We spotted an article on the Forbes magazine website that lists the Top 10 natgas producers for the entire world. By our count, eight of the ten have major or minor operations in the Marcellus/Utica. Cool! Here’s the list…
Chesapeake Energy had some big news on Tuesday. The company is selling off its Barnett Shale assets, and in the process lightening the company’s future debt load considerably. This is a bit complicated, but we’ll try our best to break it down. Chesapeake announced Tuesday they are handing over the keys to 215,000 Barnett Shale acres (some developed, some not), along with 2,800 operational wells–giving it away to Saddle Barnett Resources LLC, a Dallas-based firm backed by First Reserve Corp. In return, Saddle Barnett is taking on renegotiated midstream contracts with Williams. The net result for Chesapeake is that the deal will “incinerate” about $1.9 billion in payments they would have had to make to Williams and others. As we said, it considerably lightens the stress on Chesapeake’s balance sheet. Williams is trying to put a happy face on the fact they will get less money after the deal than before. But then again, a solvent Chesapeake (and/or Saddle Barnett) paying something less is better than a bankrupt Chesapeake paying nothing. Why cover this story on MDN, a Marcellus/Utica focused website? Because if Chesapeake did it in the Barnett in Texas, they (or someone else) may try to do something similar in the Marcellus/Utica…
Yesterday MDN brought you the story of how New York’s disgusting Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, has been colluding “unlawfully” with other AGs, including the equally disgusting Massachusetts AG Maura Healey (see 
A landowner couple in Bradford County, PA, Edward and Kathleen Ostroski, filed a royalty lawsuit against Chesapeake Energy claiming Chesapeake was screwing them out of money by conducting “creative” accounting and deducting expenses that shouldn’t be deducted. Seems like there’s hardly a state where Chessy drills where someone has not filed a similar lawsuit against the company. However, in the Ostroski case, the couple claimed (or rather, their lawyers claimed) the case should be a class action. That there are in fact some 2,000 other landowners similarly affected by Chesapeake’s actions. A U.S. Middle District judge ruled on Monday that the Ostroskis may pursue their case–but only for themselves. There will be no class action. If other landowners feel cheated, they will have to bring their own lawsuits against the company…
WellDog (what a great name!) announced on Monday the launch of a new service called Shale SweetSpotter (another great name!). Clever marketing folks at WellDog, we’ll grant them that. Shale SweetSpotter is “the first commercial reservoir-evaluation analysis technology specific to unconventional natural gas.” In English please! “We’ve just developed a way to tell drillers where oil and gas is locked away in shale layers in the acreage they’ve leased.” Apparently it’s pretty darned good. WellDog partnered up with Shell to test their service in the Marcellus and the field trials were declared “successful”…
Investment firm SailingStone Capital Partners recently purchased enough stock that the firm now owns 11% of Range Resources. That’s more than enough to exert great power and control. And so they have. That 11% stake in the company has “encouraged” (forced?) Range to grant SailingStone a seat on the board of directors. We were, at first, concerned. Is this yet another corporate raider out to force a company (Range) to layoff employees and sell assets in a bid to force the stock price higher so they can dump it and make a big profit? We don’t think so. We find no evidence that SailingStone is anything other than an investor with a lot of money who likes what they see in Range. Below is the official announcement, followed by commentary on SailingStone’s motivation for buying up Range stock…
Guess who’s back with a case now before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court? Yep, the odious nutters from Big Green Groups PennFuture, THE (arrogant) Delaware Riverkeeper, and the Peters Township gang. You may recall we reported last September of the humiliating defeat suffered by these groups in the “Gorsline” case (see 
Last week MDN reported on National Fuel Gas Company’s quarterly recently-filed quarterly report (see 
EXCO Resources, a Dallas, TX-based driller with drilling operations in Texas, North Louisiana and the Marcellus/Utica, has been inching toward bankruptcy. So far the company has stayed out of bankrutpcy and hopes they can continue to do so. Their strategy, as we reported in May, is to hire new board members and try to wiggle out of long-term pipeline contracts (see 
Kudos to EQT for being a good corporate citizen. EQT, through its charitable subsidiary the EQT Foundation, doled out $1.3 million to 43 non-profit organizations located in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky during the first half of 2016. During one of the worst downturns in the oil and gas industry in a generation. The Foundation, established in 2003, has donated a cumulative $37 million since it was founded. Astonishing! Here is a partial list of the very-worthy organizations receiving money in 1H16…
Just prior to going on trial for committing felonies while in office, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane (Democrat) needed something, ANYTHING, to distract the press from focusing on her own crimes. Since she took office in January 2013, Kane has targeted the Marcellus industry. One of the first high profile cases she manufactured (out of nothing) was to accuse XTO Energy of committing a crime in an accidental spill of a few thousand gallons of frack wastewater–an accident in Lycoming County, PA that happened years before she took office and didn’t have any long-term effects (see 
Chesapeake Energy, the second largest natural gas producer in the United States (thanks to co-founder Aubrey McClendon), issued its second quarter 2016 update yesterday. Depending on which media source you read, the update shows a company in full recovery, to a company that’s doomed. A few facts from the update: Chessy lost (on paper) $1.8 billion in 2Q16. Which is huge. But it’s much better than the $4.1 billion they lost in 2Q15–so we do see progress. Chesapeake’s debt reduction program continues. So far this year they’ve paid down another $1 billion in debt. Another good sign. As for drilling, Chesapeake currently operates 10 rigs–three each in the Eagle Ford, Haynesville and Mid-Continent plays, and one in the Utica. They’re not operating any rigs in the Marcellus at present. The company says it plans to spend close to $1.8 billion this year on drilling and will drill another 100 wells by the end of the year. Here’s the update from the biggest shale driller on the planet…