Lifeline: Chesapeake’s $4B Line of Credit Reaffirmed by Banks
Don’t tell Crazy Bernie Sanders, but apparently Big Banks (like the ones he wants to dissolve) believe Chesapeake Energy is (like the banks themselves) “too big to fail.” Yesterday Chesapeake’s Big Bank backers reaffirmed the company’s $4 billion line of credit. Twice each year oil and gas company holdings/assets are evaluated and a determination made of their value–because those holdings/assets are used as collateral should a company like Chesapeake go bankrupt. Which lately has seemed like a distinct possibility (see Chesapeake Energy: We’re Not Filing for Bankruptcy…Yet). Yesterday’s action pretty much ensures Chessy will stay out of bankruptcy court, at least until 2017, because the company has the ability to borrow oceans-full of money–up to $4 billion. In an unusual move, Chesapeake’s lenders have postponed another such “redetermination” until June 2017, more than a year from now…
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Last week the Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce and ShaleDirectories.com co-hosted the Utica Upstream conference at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, OH. MDN previously gathered up reported comments from the person who seemed to steal the show, Maria Cortez of energy research firm/consultant Wood Mackenzie (see 
MDN spotted a fascinating story in NGI’s Shale Daily publication about what may be a new trend developing in the Utica Shale. It all concerns interlateral well spacing. What the heck is that? When you drill a shale well, like a Utica well, you can drill down from a single location (i.e. well pad) multiple times and when you turn the drill bit horizontally, you drill an entirely new well. So each well pad contains, typically, anywhere from 2-12 underground wells. Each horizontal well underground is called a lateral. When you drill a lateral, you frack it–using small explosive charges to crack the rock apart near the lateral, injecting water with sand into the cracks. The water drains out, the sand remains “propping open” the cracks to allow natural gas (or oil, or NGLs) to drain out of the cracks, into the well and up the borehole to the surface. In the past few years most drillers have found putting the laterals about 750 feet apart keeps them far enough apart that the cracks from one well don’t interfere with the cracks from another well (see image below). Ideally you want the laterals to be far enough away that they don’t drain any gas from the next lateral–but close enough that you’re not leaving undrained rock in between. That distance in the Marcellus/Utica seems to be around 750 feet. But Rice Energy and Gulfport Energy, two major players in the Utica, are moving back to 1,000 foot spacing between their laterals. Why?…
The Pittsburgh Business Times hosted an event yesterday in Beaver County, PA–the place where Shell is spending money to explore whether or not to build an ethane cracker plant. Seems like we’ve been writing about Shell’s potential ethane cracker forever. We’ve chronicled just about every up and down. We’ve also highlighted various initiatives they’ve undertaken since announcing Monaca, PA as their chosen site–something they did back in March 2012, now four years ago (see 
Everybody loves a list. We do too! We spotted a ranking in a recent issue of the Pittsburgh Business Times that lists the top 37 shale gas producers in southwestern Pennsylvania, based on the amount of gas they produced in 2015. We pulled the names of the top 10, listed in order from most to least…