Mammoth Energy’s Puerto Rico Elec Work Gets it into Legal Trouble
Oilfield services company (OFS) Mammoth Energy Services, headquartered in Oklahoma City, OK, operates in the Marcellus/Utica Shale, Permian Basin, SCOOP/STACK in Oklahoma, and in Canada’s oil sands region. Mammoth not only works in OFS, they also dabble in electrical transmission and distribution (“T&D”) work. Following the 2017 disaster when Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, Mammoth was hired to help rebuild the electric utility infrastructure on the island (see Mammoth Energy Wanders into Non-Shale Work in Puerto Rico). That dalliance in non-shale work has come back to bite the company.
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In February MDN told you that Dominion Energy planned to appeal a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit blocking an important permit for Atlantic Coast Pipeline to drill under the Appalachian Trail directly to the U.S. Supreme Court (see 
Rockford Corporation, a subsidiary of Primoris Services Corporation, entered into a consent judgment with the U.S. Dept. of Labor to pay $354,933 in back wages and “damages” to employees over the practice of failing to pay overtime. Those affected include equipment operators, welders, and helpers. Rockford is one of the pipeline construction companies Williams uses to build gathering pipes in Susquehanna County, PA. Rockford works in other geographies too, not just the Marcellus. The investigation into Rockford began with their Marcellus pipeline activities in northeastern PA, then spread nationwide.
We caught a helpful update on PennEnergy Resources from a report on last week’s Hart Energy DUG East Conference in Pittsburgh. PennEnergy CEO Richard Weber told the DUG audience that his company is currently producing an average half a billion cubic feet of natural gas per day, with plans to increase that by 10% this year. One thing holding the company back is the ongoing outage of Energy Transfer’s Revolution Pipeline gathering system.
In May, MDN told you that U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected an appeal by the rich snobs from Cooperstown who call themselves Otsego 2000, challenging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) approval of Dominion Energy’s New Market Project to build two new compressor stations in Upstate NY (see 
In 2016 WGL Midstream became an investor/joint venture partner in the Stonewall Gathering System, a system which gathers Antero Resources’ natural gas from several West Virginia counties (see 
From time to time we’ve mentioned shale drilling rigs manufactured by Schramm. The company is headquartered near Philadelphia, in West Chester, PA. Because of the “prolonged downturn” in the oil and gas industry (i.e. less drilling), Schramm has just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company has defaulted on $70 million of secured loan obligations. Schramm is shopping for another company to buy it.
Last Thursday and Friday, MDN attended the Northeast Petrochemical Conference & Exhibition in Pittsburgh. There were a number of interesting stories coming from the event that we will chronicle this week. However, there was one bit of breaking news from the event: Bechtel Oil, Gas & Chemicals Senior Project Manager of Pennsylvania Chemicals, Paul Marsden, made official what we previously shared as a rumor–that Bechtel has been selected as the EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) contractor to build the PTT cracker plant complex, when and if a positive final investment decision is made. According to a number of sources, that decision will get made this year.
Two oilfield service (OFS) companies, C&J Energy Services and Keane Group, have announced a “merger of equals” in which the two will combine into one with using an all-stock merger. Both C&J and Keane have operations in the Marcellus/Utica region. Both companies previously merged with or bought out other companies. This certainly seems to be a trend with OFS companies.
Speaking of oilfield services (OFS) companies that are the result of mergers and acquisitions, for a number of years MDN tracked the monthly rig count for Patterson-UTI Energy as a proxy for rig count health in general and rig count health in the Marcellus/Utica in particular. Patterson operates many rigs in the M-U region. In April 2017, Patterson bought out and merged in Seventy Seven Energy, which was the spun-off former Chesapeake Oilfield Operating company (see 
Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), a 303-mile pipeline from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA (now 80% built), may have just found a way to eliminate one of the last remaining obstacles to completing the project. Although MVP’s solution will delay completion and cost more money. In a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission made Monday, Equitrans (builder of MVP) announced a deal with the U.S. Department of the Interior to swap ownership of land over which some of the Appalachian Trail travels in return for the right to drill under the Trail.
Energy Transfer continues to squabble with the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) over the fate of the still-closed Revolution Pipeline in western PA. In May the DEP issued an order to Energy Transfer, builder of Revolution, to “identify and restore or mitigate all streams and wetlands that it illegally eliminated or altered during the construction” of the pipeline (see