Southwestern’s Contrarian Plan: Double Down on Drilling in the Marcellus
Southwestern Energy is one of the few exploration and production (E&P) companies that is bucking the trend. Most E&Ps are slashing their 2015 drilling budgets by a third or more. Not Southwestern. They recently closed on the purchase of a massive 413,000 Marcellus Shale acres, mostly in West Virginia, from Chesapeake Energy (see Chesapeake Using $1B from Southwestern Deal to Buy Back Stock). Southwestern paid $5.375 billion. Rather than pull back on spending, in December the company announced it would double its investment in drilling for the northeast (see Southwestern Energy on a Tear – Doubles Marcellus Budget for 2015). We picked up a few more details on Southwestern’s plans for 2015, which include drilling 70 wells in northern WV…
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Last week MDN told you about the hurry-up-and-pass-it Senate Bill (SB) 280 in the West Virginia legislature. Southwestern Energy has just paid over $5 billion to acquire a bunch of land and drilling operations from Chesapeake Energy, most of it in WV (see 
Southwestern Energy is on a tear in the Marcellus/Utica region. In 2014, the company picked up 413,000 acres and some 1,500 wells from Chesapeake Energy for $4.975 billion and paid another $394 million to Statoil as part of that same deal (to get more ownership of the jointly-owned acreage); Southwestern purchased all of WPX’s acreage–46,700 acres and 63 Marcellus Shale wells–in northeast Pennsylvania for $300 million; and Southwestern cut a deal with DTE Energy to significantly expand their pipeline gathering system in northeast PA. They’ve also been busy in several other shale plays. On Monday, Southwestern issued a company update and guidance for 2015. The very notable thing about that update: Southwestern, contrary to almost every other major and minor shale player, is increasing spending on shale drilling in 2015, by $200 million…
Time to follow the bouncing ball–this is a tad complicated, but we’ll do our best to explain it. In 2008, Chesapeake Energy (under then-CEO Aubrey McClendon) took on a “silent” investing partner for 600,000 net acres in the Marcellus of West Virginia and southwest Pennsylvania. The non-operating partner for the acreage was Norwegian company Statoil, with a 32.5% interest in the acreage. Statoil put up buckets of money and Chessy did the drilling. Fast forward to October of this year. Chesapeake cut a deal to sell most of that acreage–some 413,000 acres with 435 drilled wells (see 
As we’ve been saying for some time, WPX Energy, the spun off but totally independent exploration & production company that was once part of midstream giant Williams, has been looking to exit the Marcellus stage left (see