Wastewater Co. BlueJack Energy Launches with $100M Investment
As MDN has previously pointed out, even during the downturn in the oil and gas market, there is at least one sub-sector that’s expanding: wastewater. Long after a well is drilled and fracked, once it begins producing, that well will continue to produce not only natural gas and/or oil and other hydrocarbons–it will also produce water from the depths. We’re not talking about groundwater or aquifers that sit several hundred feet down. Those water sources are well-protected by well casing. There is also abundant supplies of mineral-laden water deep in the earth that comes out of the borehole for years after a well is drilled. When drillers were sinking holes as fast as they could–and fracking them–that salty/minerally water from the depths (often called brine or saltwater) would be recycled and used for more drilling. But when there’s little or no drilling–what do you do with all that brine/wastewater? You still have to get rid of it. So the wastewater hauling/recycling/disposal industry is actually expanding. BlueJack Energy Solutions is one such new company, begun to service several shale plays including the Marcellus/Utica. Yesterday BlueJack announced it has received $100 million in investment capital from Energy Spectrum Partners–to help get the company launched quickly and into a full gallop…
Read More “Wastewater Co. BlueJack Energy Launches with $100M Investment”
In April MDN brought you the news that Mountaineer NGL Storage launched a non-binding open season for drillers who want to reserve storage capacity in a new underground storage facility to be built in Monroe County, Ohio, near Clarington, along the Ohio River (see 
Each year the Ben Franklin Shale Gas Innovation and Commercialization Center (SGICC) hosts an annual Shale Gas Innovation Contest. Last week the SGICC hosted their fifth annual contest and announced four winners that split an $80,000 prize purse. The four winners this year include: Aridea Solutions, valve manufacturer; Compass Natural Gas, a CNG (compressed natural gas) station supplier; Epiphany Water Solutions, a wastewater recycler; and someone we personally know and like a great deal–Donny Beaver with HalenHardy, who won for yet another superb product (from an ingenious and serial entrepreneur). Donny’s new product is called SPILLTRATION™–a product engineered to absorb and contain oil-based leaks and spills while allowing clean water to be filter through. Read on for a description of the products/services that won. A huge congrats to our friend Donny!…
Last week the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association (OMA), along with several other trade associations, filed a “friend of the court” brief (called an amicus brief, full copy below) in a case pending before the Ohio Seventh District Court of Appeals (in Youngstown). The OMA wants the Court of Appeals to uphold the ruling of a Harrison County trial court in the eminent domain case of Sunoco Pipeline v. Carol A. Teter, Trustee. OMA says eminent domain should be used in rare circumstances, but when no other choices remain, its use is legitimate and necessary. In particular, OMA is supporting Sunoco’s right to use eminent domain for the Mariner East 2 project–a project that will employ a lot of OMA businesses and their employees…
The ongoing low price for oil and gas is profoundly changing the drilling landscape under our feet. In what some might call a marriage of convenience we would call a marriage of desperation: U.S.-based oilfield services company FMC Technologies announced yesterday they will merge with their much larger quasi-competitor, France-based Technip, in an all-stock deal that will create a new company called TechnipFMC worth $13 billion. FMC had/has some operations in the Marcellus/Utica, hence this merger has implications for our region. The new venture would be bigger than Baker Hughes and would rival and compete with the world’s two largest oilfield services companies: Schlumberger and Halliburton. Technip specializes in engineering and construction, while FMC specializes in offshore equipment and systems. The immediate question becomes, will Europe, the U.S. and other counties that opposed the Halliburton/Baker Hughes merger also oppose this one? Prevailing thought by analysts is that this merger will have a much easier path because the two companies have very little overlap in the current services they offer…
Fairmount Santrol is a proppant manufacturer/supplier headquartered in Ohio. Proppants are things like sand and ceramic beads used to “prop open” tiny fractures created in hydraulic fracturing of shale oil and gas wells. In other words, Fairmount Santrol is a regional sand supplier for shale drillers–and a good proxy to understand what’s happening (or not happening) in our neck of the woods when it comes to drilling. If drillers aren’t drilling as much, that will show up first in the balance sheets of companies like Fairmount. And so it does. Fairmount reports in their first quarter 2016 update that revenues in 1Q16 were down 52% from 1Q15. But you can’t automatically assume that means there was half the drilling one year later. Fairmount also reports the volume of sand sold was down just 8% from 1Q15 to 1Q16. Why the discrepancy between revenue and volume? Fairmount doesn’t say, but we think we know: drillers have been putting the squeeze on supply chain companies like Fairmount, forcing them to deeply discount their prices…
In March MDN reported that Canadian midstream giant TransCanada wants a bigger piece of the Marcellus/Utica pipeline pie and has decided to buy Columbia Pipeline Group for $10 billion (see 
Three cheers for Williams. Hip hip horray! Williams announced yesterday a two-pronged legal challenge against New York State and its decision to deny stream crossing permits for the federally-approved Constitution Pipeline project (see 
Energy Transfer Equity (ETE) pushed and prodded and poked and cajoled and insisted, and finally with the help of an inside corporate raider, forced Williams to agree to a buyout/merger (see 
The process of screwing over existing stockholders in favor of debtholders continues at Seventy Seven Energy (SSE). In April, MDN told you that SSE–the old Chesapeake Oilfield Operating unit that was spun into its own company a few years ago–was ordering up one prepackaged bankruptcy to go (see