Potential Buyer for Chesapeake’s Dry Gas Utica Acreage?
Following on our rumor from yesterday that Chesapeake Energy is looking to sell their dry gas Utica acreage (see Credible Rumor: Chesapeake Shopping Utica Dry Gas Assets for $2B), we spotted an article that identifies one (or more) of the potential buyers–unnamed companies (or governments) in Asia. We should point out this article pre-dates the one we used from Seeking Alpha yesterday. However, when you fit the pieces of the puzzle together, a picture begins to emerge…
Read More “Potential Buyer for Chesapeake’s Dry Gas Utica Acreage?”
On June 28, 2014 a fire at Statoil’s Eisenbarth eight-well pad in Monroe County, OH quickly spread and engulfed some 20 trucks on the pad site, along with other equipment, chemicals and supplies stored at the site. It was a devastating fire (see 
What’s going on at Hess? On Monday MDN told you that one of Hess’ board members, John H. Mullin III, had purchased 7,000 shares of Hess stock for $381,430 (called “insider buying”), bringing his total holdings of Hess stock to $3.2 million (see 
Did Chesapeake Energy take Williams to the cleaners? Chesapeake Energy has just cut a deal with Williams to shave 25 cents per Mcf off their natural gas gathering fees in the Utica Shale (see this Shale Daily story: 
FlexEnergy, a New Hampshire-based manufacturer of gas turbines, has just sold three of their gas turbines to Pennsylvania General Energy to power a remote compressor facility in the Marcellus Shale region. The PGE compressor station will be located in a middle of nowhere area without the benefit of an electric line–hence the FlexEnergy gas-powered compressors…
While two, possibly three, major ethane cracker plant projects are being considered for the Marcellus/Utica region, there are six ethane crackers currently being built in the Gulf Coast region. The kicker? Marcellus and Utica Shale ethane will feed some of, perhaps portions for all of, those six cracker plants. It’s a shame, really. We could be reaping the rewards of a massive influx of jobs and investment not only by building an ethane cracker, but with the satellite businesses that will locate around it. Instead, much of that investment and those jobs are slipping away to the Gulf via NGL pipelines…
Cabot Oil & Gas is one of the stellar success stories of the Marcellus Shale. They drill in a single northeastern Pennsylvania county–Susquehanna County (near where MDN is located). From that single county Cabot produces 1.7-1.8 billion cubic feet (Bcf) per day of natural gas. If you want to know how to “do it right” with shale drilling in the Marcellus–you watch Cabot. The company participated in the Barclays CEO Energy/Power Conference 2015 last week in New York City. We grabbed a copy of their PowerPoint presentation from that event and include it below, along with some of the insights we glean from reviewing the presentation…
Three weeks ago MDN told you that Aubrey McClendon and his American Energy Partners had made their first foray into international oil and gas drilling (see 
Landowners in Pennsylvania have been upset with shenanigans by Chesapeake Energy in shorting them out of royalties for years. In 2013 a group of landowners in Bradford County, PA filed a lawsuit against Chesapeake over the royalty issue (see 
A couple of bits of news from Gulfport Energy, a driller focused primarily on the Utica Shale in eastern Ohio. In April, MDN reported that Gulfport had inked a deal with Paloma Partners III, a small energy & exploration company headquartered in Houston, to purchase 24,000 acres in Belmont and Jefferson counties (Ohio) for $12,500 per acre (see 
In an example of yet another instance of our wonderful industry blessing the communities in which it works, Rice Energy has just completed an annual fundraising event which raised $600,000 which they donated to 36 different first responder organizations in Pennsylvania and Ohio at a ceremony last Friday, September 11th. The first responder organizations include local volunteer fire departments, emergency medical services, regional safety organizations and police departments. Kudos to Rice for being good corporate citizens. By the way, when was the last time you heard about a “green” group like Delaware Riverkeeper, Food & Water Watch, or the Sierra Club raising and donating money to anyone but themselves? Oil & gas industry = generous givers; Environmental wackos = selfish takers…
We occasionally bring you news of when senior management or members of the board of directors for an upstream (drillers) or midstream (pipelines) company either buy or sell shares of stock in their own company. It’s called “insider trading.” There are good reasons to do both–buy or sell. But let’s be honest, if you see upper management/board members repeatedly selling their shares of stock, it just doesn’t look good (see 
On June 1 Carrizo Oil & Gas CEO Chip Johnson sold 24,661 shares of company stock for $1.2 million (see 
We have a troubling development to report about the future of drilling in West Virginia–something that has happened largely under the radar, until now. More than 200 residents in WV (likely those who don’t own the mineral rights under their land) began filing “scores” of “nuisance” lawsuits over the past couple of years against Antero Resources and Hall Drilling, in places like Doddridge County. The lawsuits claim excessive traffic, odors and noise from nearby drilling make it “impossible” for them to enjoy their homes. Each lawsuit has its own unique circumstances and should be handled separately–one size does not fit all. The troubling development is that all of these lawsuits (dozens? hundreds?) have been rolled up into one mega lawsuit that sits before the WV Mass Litigation Panel…
Pennsylvania landowners Andrew and Sally Dewing signed a 10-year lease for 493 acres of land in Bradford County, PA with Central Appalachian Petroleum in April 2001. The lease was later sold to a consortium including Abarta Oil & Gas Co., Talisman Energy USA and Range Resources. The terms of the lease require rent payments of $5 per acre per year ($2,465) for each year when their property has not be drilled on or under. After not receiving payments on time in 2010, the Dewings served the drillers notice of nonpayment. Eventually the three partners figured out who was supposed to pay and made the payment–but because the payment was late (more than 60 days late), the Dewings claimed the lease was terminated under the original terms of the lease. To make a long story short, Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled last Friday that no, the terms of the lease do not allow the Dewings to get out of the lease because the payment was late…