Coterra Makes $1.2B in 2Q, Pumps 2.8 Bcf/d NatGas, 3 Rigs in NEPA
Coterra Energy, formed last October when Cabot Oil & Gas merged with Cimarex Energy, issued its second quarter update yesterday. The company made $1.2 billion in profit last quarter, versus making just $30 million a year ago. Natural gas production in the Marcellus stayed pretty much even at 2.22 Bcf/d. The company generated over $1 billion in free cash flowing during 2Q–one of the highest, if not the highest, we’ve seen. Coterra uses its free cash flow to issue dividends, buy back shares, and retire debt sooner.
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In July 2018, a group of 100+ southwestern Pennsylvania landowners sued EQT for failure to pay them rental fees for storing natural gas under their properties (see 
According to Wikipedia, Elizabeth, PA is a borough in Allegheny County, on the east bank of the Monongahela River, where Pennsylvania Route 51 crosses, 15 miles upstream (south) of Pittsburgh and close to the county line. The population was 1,493 at the 2010 census. Very rural. Olympus Energy wants to drill a well in the township. The pad would sit about 1,700 feet (one-third of a mile) away from Elizabeth Forward High School. Some of the parents of students, and some of the administration, are pushing back against Olympus’ drilling plan, using the kiddies as an excuse.
Once upon a time, there was a “we’re all in this together” spirit with respect to cleaning up the environment and protecting Mom Earth. But then something happened, and common sense and civility went right out the door. The left elevated the climate to become its new religion and now brooks no dissent from its extreme positions. If you do not agree with the left, if you want to debate and call attention to and poke holes in arguments they make about the climate, you are labeled an apostate, a climate heretic, and banished (or worse). You likely don’t know about efforts by oil and gas companies, particularly in the Marcellus/Utica, to clean up the environment and make planet earth a better place to live. You don’t know about those efforts because the left silences Big Media and won’t allow it to report “the rest of the story,” as Paul Harvey used to say.
EQT Corporation, the biggest natural gas producer in the United States (and a pureplay Marcellus/Utica driller), issued its second quarter 2022 update yesterday. The company raked in $550 million in free cash flow during 2Q and produced 5.5 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day) of natural gas. But don’t look for EQT to increase production any time soon–not until (says top management) it can get more of its molecules to markets outside of the M-U. The company’s answer to moving more molecules is to try and expand LNG exports from the East Coast.
Antero Resources, one of the largest drillers in the Marcellus/Utica (with major assets in West Virginia), the fifth largest natgas producer in the country and the second largest LNG exporter, issued its second quarter 2022 update yesterday. During 2Q, Antero placed a new compressor station online in West Virginia, boosting Marcellus gas flows by 160 MMcf/d (million cubic feet per day). The new Castle Peak compressor station will be expanded to 240 MMcf/d in 2023. Antero generated $664 million in free cash flow and $765 million in net income during 2Q. Big company. Important company.
Diversified Energy (sadly) continues to expand outside the Marcellus/Utica region. Yesterday the company announced it is paying $240 million to buy some of ConocoPhillips’ upstream assets in Oklahoma and Texas. The assets include roughly 1,500 wells spanning 250,000 acres. Diversified, which now owns approximately 8 million acres of leases with close to 70,000 (mostly) conventional oil and gas wells used to be solely focused on the Appalachian region–until last year.
In early 2013 the Pittsburgh International Airport and Allegheny County, PA, signed a deal with CONSOL Energy (now CNX Resources) to lease 9,000 acres surrounding the airport for natural gas drilling (see 
For the week of July 18-24, the three Marcellus/Utica states issued just 16 permits to drill new shale wells, down from 43 the prior week. Pennsylvania and West Virginia both issued eight new permits each. Ohio issued a big, fat, goose egg. PA issued three permits each to Greylock Energy (Green County) and Pennsylvania General Energy (Tioga County), and one each to EQT and Seneca Resources. WV issued four permits each to Jay-Bee Oil & Gas (Tyler County) and Tug Hill Operating (Wetzel County).
Diversified Energy is growing again. In February, Diversified bought out and merged in well-plugging company Next LVL Energy, headquartered in the Pittsburgh area (see 
Range Resources, the very first company to sink a Marcellus Shale well back in 2004, issued its annual 2021-2022 Corporate Sustainability Report yesterday. “Sustainability” is Range’s terminology for ESG, or environmental, social, and governance. A couple of notable observations in this latest report: (1) Range has doubled its methane monitoring inspection system using LDAR from four times a year to eight times a year; and (2) Range has the lowest methane intensity, or percentage of methane emissions, in the entire Appalachian basin–according to a third party evaluator.
Oil and gas giant BP recently released its annual Statistical Review of World Energy–the 71st edition (full copy below). Among the interesting findings in BP’s analysis of global energy last year: Fossil fuels–coal, natural gas and oil–accounted for 82% of primary energy use worldwide last year, down from 83% in 2019 and 85% five years ago. The report doesn’t disclose what percentage of world energy use comes from so-called renewables, wind and solar. We suspect it remains at around 3-4% as in years past. Meaning the legacy media narrative of renewables saving the world is once again exposed as horse manure.