Chesapeake CEO Says Lots of Interest in Buying Its Eagle Ford Assets
In April 2021, MDN brought you the news that Chesapeake Energy, after buying Eagle Ford oil assets in 2018 for $4 billion (during the reign of Doug Lawler), was looking to unload those assets for around $2 billion (see 50% Off Deal! Chesapeake Rumored to Shop Eagle Ford for $2B). The company hired Evercore in August of this year to conduct an auction of the assets (see Chesapeake Energy Hires Evercore to Auction Off Eagle Ford Assets). New CEO Nick Dell’Osso says there has been a “tremendous amount of interest” in the company’s EF assets.
Read More “Chesapeake CEO Says Lots of Interest in Buying Its Eagle Ford Assets”
Last week the three states with active Marcellus/Utica drilling, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, issued a collective 40 new drilling permits, way up from the 19 permits issued the week before. But there was a shocker. PA only issued nine new permits, while OH issued 14 new permits and WV issued a record high 17 new permits.
Yesterday MDN brought you the news that EQT Corporation is buying the West Virginia assets of Tug Hill Operating–the company’s THQ Appalachia operation–for $5.2 billion (see 
Spanish-owed Repsol owns 214,000 net acres of leases in the Marcellus Shale, primarily located in northeastern Pennsylvania in Bradford, Susquehanna, and Tioga counties. However, the company’s upstream (drilling) operations extend far beyond the Marcellus–to other plays and even to other countries. EIG, a leading institutional investor in the global energy and infrastructure sectors, yesterday announced that it has entered into a deal with Repsol to acquire a 25% stake in Repsol’s upstream operations. EIG will pay Repsol $4.8 billion for the privilege. And what will Repsol do with $4.8 billion in cash?
The rumors were right. Yesterday we brought you the news (rumors), as reported by both Reuters and Bloomberg, that EQT Corporation was about to seal a deal to buy Tug Hill’s THQ Appalachia operation with major assets in West Virginia (see 
The mighty Shell ethane cracker complex in Monaca (Beaver County), PA, is due to come online any day now. In fact, with such a large and complex facility, it is already “coming online” gradually and has been since August (see 
Epsilon Energy, one of the smaller Marcellus drillers that we track, issued an update this week to say the company has issued a dividend and has repurchased shares of the company’s stock in an effort to reward and increase value to investors. Epsilon also reports a new well in which they own a share recently came online to sales in Susquehanna County, PA.
In September 2021, the Weirton (WV) Zoning Board of Appeals rejected a request by Southwestern Energy to build a well pad inside city limits (see 
Drillers (exploration and production companies, or E&Ps) were thrilled with record-high earnings and cash flow in the second quarter of this year. Soaring commodity prices and “strict financial discipline” on the part of oil and gas drillers resulted in pre-tax operating earnings and cash flows surging by 29% and 22%, respectively, from 1Q22. And 1Q22 was up too! So what did drillers, especially drillers in the Marcellus/Utica, do with all that extra cash? Did they pay down debt? Buy back shares of company stock? Issue higher dividends? Something else?
Antero Resources is one of the largest drillers in the Marcellus/Utica (with major assets in West Virginia). The company is the fifth largest natgas producer in the country and the second largest LNG exporter. It’s also one of our favorite Marcellus/Utica drillers. As good and careful as companies like Antero are when hiring, sometimes there’s a rotten apple found in the barrel. Such was the case with a former employee who headed up the company’s operations in WV–where most of its drilling happens. The former employee took bribes and kickbacks from a vendor over a period of years (2012-2015), steering contracts to that vendor. The vendor’s performance was not as good as other competitors. At the end of years of litigation, Antero has finally been awarded compensation from a jury, and a bit extra from a judge, to make up for the actions of their rogue employee.
Olympus Energy (formerly Huntley & Huntley) drills in the Greater Pittsburgh region, in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties. Last year Olympus filed an application to build a new well pad in a rural part of Allegheny County, in West Deer Township. So-called “concerned citizens” (anti-fossil fuel zealots) got amped up to oppose the rural project (see 
BKV Corporation (Banpu Kalnin Ventures), the American shale drilling arm of Banpu of Thailand (Banpu owns 96% of BKV), originally entered the American shale sector by investing over $500 million in 2016-2017 to buy existing Marcellus wells and acreage in northeast Pennsylvania. Over the past seven years, BKV has become one of the top 20 gas-weighted natural gas producers in the U.S. BKV is now (with recent purchases) the largest natural gas producer in the Barnett Shale. The company is on a mission to be so-called net zero emissions (Scopes 1 & 2) by 2025. One of the ways the company plans to do it is by using ESG technology from Verde Co2 CCS, LLC.