Jeb Bush Visits Rice Energy Today to Unveil New Energy Plan
Low energy Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush (as Donald Trump calls him) has decided to inject some high energy (as in the energy industry) into his campaign. Jeb is today visiting the Pittsburgh headquarters of one of the Marcellus/Utica’s most successful drillers–Rice Energy–to unveil his energy plan that calls for the lifting of the crude oil export ban (something our Dear Leader, President Obama, opposes) and for the approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline (Obama also opposes). However, the thing that makes Jeb’s visit to Rice Energy salient and meaningful for the Marcellus/Utica is that he will call for (a) lifting restrictions on exporting natural gas–making it easier to export natgas to Japan, China and European countries, and (b) fight Obama’s Clean Power Plan (CPP). There is no doubt Bush will say all of the right words and espouse policies the oil and gas industry can strongly support. The question is, will he actually do any of it if he gets elected?…
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The Washington County (PA) Firemen’s Association recently opened a new $500,000 gas well training center at the fire academy located at 895 Western Ave in Houston, PA. The project, which took more than a year to plan and complete, was completely funded by some of the biggest and best drillers in the Marcellus/Utica, including Range Resources, Rice Energy, CONSOL Energy, EQT, American Well Service and others. It will be used to train first responders not only in Washington County, but also from other parts of Pennsylvania along with West Virginia and Ohio. According to Pennsylvania Fire Commissioner Tim Solobay, “There’s nothing like it outside of Texas”…
In an example of yet another instance of our wonderful industry blessing the communities in which it works, Rice Energy has just completed an annual fundraising event which raised $600,000 which they donated to 36 different first responder organizations in Pennsylvania and Ohio at a ceremony last Friday, September 11th. The first responder organizations include local volunteer fire departments, emergency medical services, regional safety organizations and police departments. Kudos to Rice for being good corporate citizens. By the way, when was the last time you heard about a “green” group like Delaware Riverkeeper, Food & Water Watch, or the Sierra Club raising and donating money to anyone but themselves? Oil & gas industry = generous givers; Environmental wackos = selfish takers…
Welcome to Friday. It’s time for a brief tutorial on “short selling” or “going short” in the stock market. Even if you don’t participate in the stock market, you need to pay attention if you work for a Marcellus driller or other publicly traded company that sells to or is part of the industry. You also need to pay attention if you are leased with a Marcellus driller. A company’s stock price is key to the value of the company–something called its market capitalization. The more a company is worth (the more “market cap” it has) the more it can borrow when it needs to for things like drilling new wells. A bigger market cap also means a company can borrow money at a lower interest rate (more collateral/value, less risk). Let’s take a look at the recent market gyrations and how those gyrations have encouraged something called short selling of Marcellus-related stocks…
There is no doubt the current stock market crash (what else can you call it?) has affected everyone and everything–including the Marcellus/Utica industry. Yesterday the price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil closed the trading day at $38.24 per barrel–the lowest price since 2009 during the dark days of “the Great Recession”. Natural gas trading at the benchmark Henry Hub in southern Louisiana, often used as a proxy for all natural gas, closed at $2.64 per thousand cubic feet (Mcf). The Dow Jones Industrial average sunk another 588 points to close down more than 1,000 points in two trading sessions–last Friday and yesterday. At the beginning of trading yesterday, the DJIA experienced its biggest intraday (within a single day) loss ever–plunging more than 1,000 points as trading began. Thankfully it regained nearly half of that–but still, it was scary on many levels. All of that fear has affected all stocks, including the stock price for some of the biggest Marcellus/Utica drillers, who saw losses averaging 7-10% in a single day–yesterday…
We’re always a little bit troubled when we see senior management at a company selling their shares of stock in the company they continue to manage. Not long ago four top Carrizo Oil & Gas executive officers, including the CEO, dumped 50,000 shares of stock (see 
A slide we spotted in a Gastar presentation got us to thinking: What are the top 10 Utica Shale wells? Who drilled them? And how much was their initial production (IP) rates? So we went searching and came up with the handy list below. This list is current as of August 2015. A few caveats: First, some of the wells in the list produced not only methane (“dry gas”) but also oil, condensate and natural gas liquids–i.e. other hydrocarbons. However, the numbers in the list below are for the methane/dry gas only portion of what the well flowed during an initial period of time (typically the first 24 hours). So keep that in mind. These are not necessary dry gas only wells, but the numbers are for the dry gas portion coming from the well. Second, we scoured the MDN archives and other sources to compile the list. If you believe we’ve overlooked a well–let us know! We would be happy to correct the list. As it is, we believe it to be accurate. It tells a pretty incredible story. Below the Top 10 list is another list–of MDN stories covering the details for the wells in the Top 10 list…
With all of this talk about CONSOL Energy and Noble Energy and mergers/acquisitions and workforce reductions, we came across an interesting story and analysis by SNL Financial summarizing a Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research report issued last Friday. The Goldman report evaluates 38 exploration and production (E&P) companies on their suitability and desirability as mergers and acquisitions candidates based on asset quality, potential upside returns to the buyer as oil and gas prices improve, and low break-even operations. That is, of all the E&Ps out there, which ones are most likely to be targeted for a takeover, and by whom? The surprising answer is that Cabot Oil & Gas and Range Resources, both huge Marcellus drillers, are among the takeover targets. And the super majors interested in doing the taking over? Exxon Mobil and Statoil…
Last Friday MDN brought you the Rice Energy first quarter 2015 update (see