Munroe Falls Won’t Let it Go: Files New Lawsuit Against Beck Energy
“Unbelievably dense” is how we would describe the “leaders” of Munroe Falls, Ohio. Going back to 2012, Monroe Falls–a “city” with a population of 5,000–has been attempting to stop legally permitted wells from being drilled on private property within city limits. Munroe Falls ordered Beck Energy to cease and desist drilling activity claiming the driller had not secured permits from the city first (Mother May I?). The object was to never let Beck drill, to deny them the permits they would need to seek, so Beck took them to court and an Ohio appeals court struck down Munroe Falls’ “home rule” zoning ordinances as illegal (see OH Appeals Court Strikes Down Home Rule for Drilling). The case was appealed to the OH Supreme Court and the supremes ruled in favor of Beck Energy (see OH Supreme Court Strikes Down Home Rule in Gas Drilling Case). For normal people that would be the end of it. However, it was a close decision (4-3) and the supremes left lots of wiggle room from municipalities to continue making life miserable for drillers (see Some Options Still Available After OH Court Strikes Down Home Rule). So even though Munroe Falls went all the way to the top and lost–once again they’ve just filed another zoning lawsuit against Beck Energy. Do they never learn?…
Read More “Munroe Falls Won’t Let it Go: Files New Lawsuit Against Beck Energy”
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 75,000 acres of leases. Last year Stone quit drilling in the northeast and actually shut-in part of their production due to low prices (see 
Rex Energy, a small Marcellus/Utica driller headquartered in State College, PA, is trying to keep its head above the financial waterline. It’s struggling, but making progress. In April Rex became the latest driller to convert outstanding debt in the form of notes (what we call IOUs) into equity, or stock ownership (see 
There’s an old saying that goes like this: “Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.” Not long ago MDN reported that Eclipse Resources had drilled what is believed to be the longest horizontal well (on land) in the world–the 3.5 mile “Purple Hayes” Utica Shale well (see 
A decision by the Middle District Court of Pennsylvania is worth noting–for both drillers AND landowners. A landowner in Susquehanna County, PA sold some land already under lease to a new landowner/rights owner. Neither the new landowner nor the previous landowner informed the driller of the change in ownership. The time came to renew the lease and under the terms of the contract the driller sent payment–but didn’t know about the change in ownership–so the driller sent the payment to the previous owner. The new landowner used that faux pas as a legal excuse to sue the driller to break the contract. The new landowner claimed the paperwork filed (not the full lease but an abstract) didn’t contain mention of informing the driller. In other words, the landowner used the “we didn’t know” excuse. The judge disagreed and said, a) the lease itself clearly outlines the responsibilities of the old/new landowners to inform the driller, b) there is a reasonable expectation for the new landowner to perform due diligence in seeking out a copy of the original lease to know that. Therefore the new landowner is still under lease. Here’s an outline of the case, with names…
Last December Pennsylvania’s felony-indicted Attorney General, Kathleen Kane, brought a lawsuit against Chesapeake Energy, Anadarko and Williams accusing them of, among other things, royalty fraud (see 
Earlier this month MDN told you about the “Purple Hayes”–a Utica Shale well drilled by Eclipse Resources in Guernsey County, OH that is thought to be the longest shale well every drilled, at 3.5 miles (see 
In February Shell completed the merger with/purchase of BG Group–the largest such megamerger since Exxon bought Mobil in the 1990s (see 
The climate changer crazies were in full regalia outside of the Dallas, TX facility where Exxon Mobil was holding its annual meeting yesterday morning. Sporting signs that said “Keep It in the Ground” and “System Change not Climate Change” (which was from “an ecosocialist coalition”) and many others, these nutjobs shouted at investors filing in to the facility. Christopher Helman, a reporter from Forbes, was on hand–both inside the meeting and outside to talk with the crazies (give that man hazard pay!). Helman files this report…
Last week MDN told you that the board at EXCO Resources, a company in financial trouble, is considering “restructuring”–coded language for bankruptcy (see 
In June 2015 then-Secretary of the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), John Quigley, slapped Range Resources with an $8.9 million fine–the largest such fine ever levied by the DEP (see 
Perhaps it’s a good thing when one’s children leave the nest. As we’ve been reporting, even prior to Aubrey McClendon’s untimely death, the subsidiary companies he founded as part of his new venture, American Energy Partners, were running away from Aubrey as fast as they could (see 
Floyd Wilson, CEO of driller Halcon Resources, is a plainspoken kind of guy. Halcon “guessed wrong” by leasing 140,000 Utica Shale acres in the northern part of the play (in Ohio) and currently doesn’t drill in any of that acreage. Their less-than-stellar acreage led Wilson to comment, in colorful language, that the company would no longer drill any “substandard” (our word) Utica wells (see 
As MDN has previously noted, Atlas Energy has been in financial trouble for some time. Just a few years after the company sold two different tranches of their vast Marcellus assets for a cumulative $12 billion, the company’s stock was tossed off the New York Stock Exchange and relegated to the Pink Sheets as a penny stock (see