Vantage Outbids Rice For Bankrupt Alpha Natural’s 27K Marcellus Acres
Earlier this year Alpha Natural Resources (ANR), primarily a coal company with 27,400 acres of Marcellus/Utica Shale leases, filed for bankruptcy and announced it would sell off its Marcellus assets. ANR previously had a joint venture with Rice Energy (which Rice later bought out). Rice was also interested in the 27K acres ANR is selling as part of their bankruptcy–and made a “stalking horse” bid of $200 million for the assets (see Rice Energy Offers Bankrupt ANR $200M for Marcellus/Utica Assets). Other drillers objected to what they considered a sweetheart deal (see EQT, APP Challenge Rice Energy’s $200M Bid for ANR Shale Assets). In the end, Rice didn’t get it anyway. ANR announced yesterday that Vantage Energy won the bidding process–paying $339.5 million for the assets, “far exceeding” Rice’s bid…
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Earlier this month MDN brought you the exciting news that Eclipse Resources, a smaller Marcellus/Utica pure play driller headquartered in State College, PA (but drilling mostly in Ohio) has drilled the world’s longest shale well–in the Utica in Guernsey County, OH (see 
Last month MDN told you that the Penn Township (Westmoreland County) zoning board refused to grant a permit to Apex Energy to build a DEP-permitted well pad in the town (see 
EXCO Resources was once a sizable player in the Marcellus. They still have 145,000 net acres in the Marcellus, with 124 horizontal Marcellus wells drilled and in production. However, EXCO, as we pointed out in March, has pretty much abandoned the Marcellus at this point (see 
Rex Energy Corporation released its first quarter 2016 update yesterday. The company reported operating revenues were down 44% year over year. Although Rex lowered some of their expenses, the company lost $62 million in 1Q16. Production during the first three months of the year stayed just about the same as 1Q15–approximately 200 million cubic feet equivalent per day (Mmcfe/d). Rex spent $30.6 million drilling and completing wells in their various locations in the Utica and Marcellus during 1Q16–so at least they’re one driller who’s still drilling in our region. Here’s the update with details…
An MDN reader recently alerted us to a little-known fact: JKLM Energy has successfully drilled and is flowing gas from Potter County, PA’s first Utica Shale well. JKLM is owned by Terry Pegula, the guy who sold most of his Marcellus assets and used the money to buy the Buffalo Bills (see 
Chesapeake Energy, the second largest natural gas driller in the U.S. (behind Exxon Mobil) and one of the largest in the Marcellus/Utica, has been on a roller coaster for the past few years. Corporate raider Carl Icahn bought himself a big slice of the company, and along with another corporate raider/Chesapeake investor, Mason Hawkins, they tossed CEO Aubrey McClendon out the door. The two then installed their own guy, Doug Lawler, who proceeded to slash jobs and sell assets–all in a bid to prop up the company’s stock price so these two corporate raiders can make a buck on their investment. We call it disgusting. Others call it business as usual. The result? Chesapeake’s stock tanked and there were rumors of an impending bankruptcy (see 
As we reported in March, EV Energy Partners (EVEP)–an upstream master limited partnership (MLP) created by EnerVest that holds enormous acreage in the Ohio Utica Shale play–is in survival mode (see 
This is the tale of landowners who negotiated a lease without consulting a qualified oil and gas attorney, and later regretted the decision. In 2008 the owners of a small hunting and fishing camp in Tioga County, PA negotiated and signed a lease with East Resources, which was later sold to SWEPI (i.e. the shale drilling arm of Shell). The lease, so the landowners thought, guaranteed that 11 wells would be drilled on the 240-acre property, and that a pipeline would be used to flow gas only from those wells. The landowners got a nice signing bonus–$287,000. They also got $164,000 for a pipeline right-of-way. But only one well was ever drilled–and it’s capped. And there is a pipeline–flowing other people’s gas through it. The landowners sued and a district court judge ruled last week that the landowners don’t have a case for their “shattered dreams” as they thought they did. It all comes down to a poorly worded lease and signing a lease without running it by a lawyer first…
Crestwood Equity Partners (nee Crestwood Midstream) issued its first quarter 2016 update last week. In April Crestwood announced that New York City utility giant Consolidated Edison Inc. has formed a 50/50 joint venture to purchase ownership of pipelines and storage facilities in the PA and NY Marcellus region (see