Energy Companies | Lease & Royalty Payments | Pennsylvania | Range Resources Corp | Washington County
Rising Phoenix Royalties Buys Royalty Payments from PA Landowner
Rising Phoenix Royalties (RPR) announced it has purchased the future royalty payments from a landowner in the Marcellus Shale, in Washington County, PA. This latest purchase by RPR covers 98 acres drilled under by Range Resources. This is not the first RPR transaction we’ve reported on.
Read More “Rising Phoenix Royalties Buys Royalty Payments from PA Landowner”
This edition of the Marcellus/Utica permits report covers the past two weeks as MDN was taking a break during the last week of 2021. For the period of December 20 through January 2, there were 29 permits issued to drill new shale wells in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. PA had 16 new permits (most of them located on two well pads), OH had 12 new permits (spread across five well pads), and WV had just one new permit. Must be WV DEP took the last two weeks of the year off.
Contrary to the false narrative spun by leftist media that “everyone,” especially large institutional investors, are divesting from and refusing to buy new investments in stocks of companies that drill for oil and natural gas, some of the largest institutional investors came off the sidelines and some (for the first time ever!) got into the game by investing in individual shale gas stocks in the Marcellus/Utica during the third quarter of 2021. Which big investors did the investing and how much did they invest/purchase in the way of stock? We have all the deets below…
In August 2020 when Range Resources, the very first company to sink a Marcellus well back in 2004, issued its annual Corporate Sustainability Report (CSR), the company laid out a goal of achieving so-called net-zero carbon emissions by 2025 (see 
For a variety of reasons, but mainly due to investor pressure, Range Resources will continue to produce about the same amount of natural gas next year as it is forecast to produce this year: right around 2.1-2.2 Bcfe/d (billion cubic feet equivalent of production every day). That was the takeaway from yesterday’s Range 3Q21 update. The company’s hedges (presales of production at a specific price) hurt the company’s finances. During Q3 Range had a $652 million derivative fair value loss due to increases in commodity prices. Range’s 3Q loss totaled $350 million vs. a $749 million loss in the same period last year–at least it’s an improvement.
A few weeks ago MDN tackled the question of why natural gas producers, in general, are not drilling more given the high price of natural gas right now (see 
Small investors have a golden opportunity. Oil and gas companies (drillers in particular) are more profitable than ever, yet many large investors are avoiding and will not invest in them. Why? Because they’re idiots? Well, yes, that’s one reason. But the root cause is they have been cowed by loud-mouthed environmental extremists. Threatened by them. Oil and gas companies are still here, still providing a critical service to the world, and still need investors. That’s a great opportunity for small investors–like you.
A healthy number of permits were issued to drill new shale wells across the Marcellus/Utica region last week. Pennsylvania issued 19 new permits in both southwest and northeast PA. Ohio issued 8 new permits, all of them to a single driller (Ascent Resources) for two well pads in two different counties. West Virginia issued 9 new permits–all but 2 of them were issued to Antero Resources in Tyler County.
We’ve noticed nearly all of the public companies (and many private companies) in the oil and gas space are talking about their ESG (environmental, social, governance) programs. There’s a lot of hot air surrounding ESG programs. How does one separate out fact from fiction? Enverus, the company that produces (in our opinion) the best and most accurate weekly rig count numbers, has a solution. Enverus has developed a new framework/system to compare one oil/gas company’s ESG efforts against its competitors. Of the top 10 best ESG programs in the oil and gas industry are four companies (drillers) in the Marcellus/Utica. Coming in at the #1 position is none other than the largest natural gas driller in the country: EQT.