Indian Giant RIL Looking to Dump its Marcellus Joint Ventures
The single largest company in India, and one of the largest energy companies in the world, is Reliance Industries Limited (RIL). As of July 2013, RIL had invested a massive $5.7 billion in three shale joint ventures–the bulk of that in the Marcellus Shale. The company was planning to double it’s shale investment to over $10 billion! But a funny thing happened on the way the Forum. Prices for oil and gas started to slump, and RIL’s return on their shale investments slumped with it. RIL invested $3.5 billion in a Marcellus joint venture with Atlas Energy in 2010 (see Joint Venture Between Reliance Industries and Atlas Energy Worth $3.5 Billion Over 10 Years). RIL later battled Chevron to buy Atlas–but Chevron won, so RIL became a jv partner with Chevron (see India’s RIL Loses Bidding War for Atlas Energy – $4.3 Billion Deal with Chevron Goes Forward). RIL currently has 3 jv’s, the Chevron jv in the Marcellus (owns 40% of that acreage), a jv with Carrizo Oil & Gas in the Marcellus (owns 60% of that acreage), and a jv with Pioneer Natural Resources in the Texas Eagle Ford (owns 45% of that acreage). Now comes word that RIL wants to exit all of their jv’s and wash their hands of U.S. shale, a 180 degree reversal from just a few years ago…
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Big news for GreenHunter Resources: They finally have two more wastewater injection wells up and running at their Mills Hunter facility in Meigs County, OH. In May we reported that GreenHunter was hoping to have four new injection wells operating at the Mills Hunter facility by the end of June, for a total of six operating wells (see 
Last Friday during the Cabot Oil & Gas quarterly earnings call update with analysts, Cabot’s CEO Dan Dinges provided an important update on the Constitution Pipeline, a 125-mile pipeline that will stretch from the gas fields of Susquehanna County, PA into New York, to Schoharie County. It is a critically needed pipeline to get Cabot’s natural gas in Susquehanna County to markets throughout the northeast and New England. Although Williams is the lead company building the pipeline, Cabot is the other primary partner in the project. Currently the Constitution is 100% FERC authorized and they have 100% of the rights of way leases signed for the project. The only hold-up is the New York State Dept. of Environmental Conservation in granting 401 Water Quality Certificates that allows the Constitution to lay pipe through and under swamps, creeks and other bodies of water. According to Dinges, they expect NY to issue those permits any day now…
Here’s one flying under the radar that we didn’t know about–until now. In the spring of 2013 Magnum Hunter Resources (MHR), a driller now focused totally on the Marcellus and Utica Shale region, dismissed it’s accounting firm. Apparently some investors didn’t like that action and accused MHR’s senior management and board of directors of “breaches of fiduciary duties and other matters.” The investors filed lawsuits in seven different courts alleging misconduct. As of June 22, the last of those lawsuits was dismissed. In fact, all of the lawsuits filed have been dismissed and MHR paid out zero dollars to settle. Yes, it cost the company big money to defend themselves, but they held firm and didn’t cave and in the end they were exonerated from any wrongdoing…
We have plenty of EQT news today, but none of it is (for us) as big as this: EQT finished fracking their very first Utica Shale well in Greene County, PA last week, a well that they call “the most technically challenging well” they’ve ever drilled. But man oh man was it worth it! The EQT Utica well is gargantuan. It is the new reigning #1 champ for any on-shore shale well anywhere in the world that we’re aware of when it comes to production. The EQT Utica well produced a truly astonishing initial production (IP) of 72.9 million cubic feet of natural gas per day (MMcf/d). The previous record-holder was a Range Resources Utica well in Washington County, PA at 59 MMcf/d (see