MiQ Certifies 100% of Seneca Resources’ 1 Bcf/d of M-U Production
Seneca Resources, a 100% subsidiary and the drilling arm of National Fuel Gas Company, announced on Tuesday that the company has achieved an “A” certification grade under the MiQ Standard for Methane Emissions Performance (MiQ Standard), the highest available certification level MiQ awards, for all of the company’s 1+ billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of natural gas production in the Marcellus/Utica. Seneca can now claim it produces responsible gas and the molecules can be traded/bundled on the MiQ Digital Registry.
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National Fuel Gas Company (NFG), the parent company for Seneca Resources and Empire Pipeline, recently issued its latest update for the quarter ending June 30 (NFG’s third fiscal quarter, everyone else’s second quarter). NFG is a truly integrated company, including drilling, pipelines, and a utility company serving end-user customers. The company made $108 million in profit for the quarter, mostly driven by its upstream (drilling) unit Seneca Resources. In fact, upstream/drilling represented half (50%) of NFG’s revenues in 3Q22.
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).
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who is running for governor of the Keystone State, has once again targeted a shale energy company in his zeal to prove he despises the Marcellus even more than current Gov. Tom Wolf does (burnishing his credentials with the environmental left who makes up his base). Yesterday Shapiro’s office issued a press release announcing that the Big Man has bullied Southeast Directional Drilling, a subcontractor of National Fuel Gas Supply Corporation (i.e. Seneca Resources), into pleading guilty to spilling nontoxic drilling mud into a creek so small it doesn’t have a name. Southeast will have to pay a $15,000 fine.
Wow! What a difference two years can make. At the dawn of the pandemic, the share price for publicly traded oil and gas stocks (in particular Marcellus/Utica drillers) was in the basement. With the pandemic now in the rearview mirror (we hope), and demand increasing for both oil and natural gas, the price of oil and gas has skyrocketed, and along with it, O&G companies are raking in the cash. How are M-U drillers using their newfound piles of cash to compensate investors?
Daniel Sherwood takes a look at various metrics for Marcellus/Utica drillers in the latest edition of the TCF Upstream Monthly. Sherwood uses production trends, well efficiencies, and portfolio decline rates to compare and contrast M-U drillers. In the June issue (full copy below), Sherwood finds that CNX Resources and Chesapeake Energy are “leading,” Gulfport Energy and National Fuel Gas (i.e. Seneca Resources) are “underperforming,” and Coterra Energy (formerly Cabot Oil & Gas) is “improving.”
We spotted a story on The Motley Fool investor’s website yesterday noting that several Marcellus/Utica publicly-traded drillers saw “double-digit” increases in their share price just yesterday, for a single day. The article highlights both Range Resources and Southwestern Energy. We started nosing around to see how the stock price for all of the big publicly-traded M-U drillers has performed this year, from the beginning of the year. It was an eye-opener. ALL of them are up from the beginning of the year. Most are up at least 75% in value since Jan. 1. A few have doubled in value, now up more than 100% since Jan. 1. We have the list below for how each one performed. Welcome to the bull market in oil and gas!
National Fuel Gas Company (NFG), headquartered in Buffalo, NY, is the only fully integrated energy company operating in the Marcellus/Utica, by which we mean NFG is a driller (Seneca Resources), a midstream/pipeline company (Empire Pipeline), and a downstream end-user via its local distribution company (LDC), otherwise known as the local gas utility company (National Fuel). Little known fact: NFG’s Seneca Resources subsidiary owns an oil drilling operation in California. But not for much longer…
One of the hottest of the hot sectors in which to invest (right now) is shale energy. That’s according to multiple sources, including a veteran finance writer, investor, engineer, and researcher. In an article appearing on the OilPrice.com website, Alex Kimani talks up mid-cap energy stocks as outperforming the supermajors. Among two of Kimani’s top three picks are two Marcellus/Utica drillers, who are having a stellar year in stock performance. We went looking for the stock performance of other M-U drillers too. We have a list to share showing just how much each driller’s share price has increased this year.