EQT Sheds Divisions/Assets to Focus on Marcellus Shale
In a shareholders meeting held Wednesday at EQT Corp in Pittsburgh, the company laid out a strategy of focusing on drilling for shale gas in southwestern PA. That means they will continue to divest from other businesses, like their Equitable Gas utility company (waiting for regulatory approval to sell it), and the sale of their coalbed methane acreage in Virginia.
EQT plans to focus like a laser on the Marcellus Shale:
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It was pretty easy to predict (and MDN predicted it), that a very youthful Aubrey McClendon would not just sit on his hands and lick his wounds after being unceremoniously tossed aside by corporate raider Carl Icahn and other Chessy investors. MDN said this on April 1:
Just a few days after MDN editor Jim Willis visited Pittsburgh, a small group of 15 anti-drillers made fools of themselves in front of EQT Plaza in downtown Pittsburgh. Their (latest) cause? They don’t like the new Center for Sustainable Shale Development (CSSD) and EQT’s participation in it. They believe the CSSD legitimizes "dirty" fossil fuels, like clean-burning natural gas, and since they (irrationally) hate all fossil fuels, any effort at ensuring mining of those fuels is done safely is tantamount to killing Mother Earth. Wackos.
A flash fire at a "pig receiving station" along a Eureka Hunter pipeline near Wick (Tyler County), WV last Thursday evening seriously injured three people requiring they be airlifted to Pittsburgh. A fourth person was taken to a local hospital. Sadly, one of the seriously injured workers, 56-year-old Bruce Phipps of Marietta, Ohio, died late Friday night. Pipeline Inspection Gauges (or Pigs) are used for pipeline cleaning, inspection and maintenance, and fluid batching in pipelines. A pig is pushed along the inside of a pipeline by the flow of liquid or gas. A pig launching station is used to insert the pig into a pipeline using a series of valves and hatches. The pig is pushed through the pipeline by the liquid or gas stream to the pig receiving station.
More pipelines for both dry and wet gas, and perhaps just as important, a new cryogenic gas processing plant is coming to northwestern PA courtesy of a brand new joint venture partnership between midstream giant Williams and exploration & production giant Shell. The new jv will service not only Shell (the first customer to be signed), but also other energy producers in the area. It will be aimed at both the Marcellus and Utica Shale in the region.
As this issue goes to press, the Wall Street Journal and Fox Business is reporting that Chesapeake Energy has put 94,205 Utica Shale acres on the auction block. That’s nearly 10% of their remaining 1 million Utica Shale acres. This is not unprecedented. Last June Chesapeake put 337,000 acres on the auction block (see