Texas Eastern Pipeline Explodes near Pittsburgh, Antis Celebrate
There was an explosion and fire in Spectra Energy’s Texas Eastern Transmission’s “Delmont Line 27” pipeline last Friday. The explosion occurred in Salem Township (Westmoreland County), PA, about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh. One man was seriously burned when his house caught on fire (his house was destroyed). Nine homes in the area of the explosion/blaze were evacuated. As of yesterday six of the nine were able to return to their homes. Texas Eastern Transmission is one of the largest natural gas pipelines in the U.S.–running from the Gulf Coast through Marcellus/Utica country to New Jersey. The really disgusting part was the way the NJ chapter of the radical Sierra Club immediately, with a few hours, used the explosion by implying this is what awaits homeowners if the PennEast Pipeline is built. FYI, the Texas Eastern pipeline was built in 1981 and the portion that exploded was last inspected in 2012. Below are pieces of news accounts and the running response from Spectra about the accident…
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It’s a sad day for Halliburton and Baker Hughes. The two companies intended to get married, with Halliburton buying out BH and merging it in a deal worth $35 billion (see 
Each month MDN tracks the number of active rigs deployed by oilfield services drilling company Patterson-UTI Energy (see our 
In addition to watching companies that operate drilling rigs, like Patterson-UTI Energy (see today’s companion story) for indications of how well (or not) the drilling industry is doing, another type of company to watch is a proppant company–the companies that supply sand and ceramic beads used in fracking. CARBO Ceramics is one of the premier such companies. Yesterday CARBO issued their first quarter 2016 update. Like Patterson, the news wasn’t so good. CARBO lost $25 million in 1Q16. In some cases E&Ps (exploration and production companies, or “drillers” here on MDN) are electing to complete previously drilled wells–and that’s good for CARBO. But in many cases drillers are electing to leave already-drilled wells uncompleted, i.e. not fracked, and that’s bad for CARBO. Here’s more of the good, the bad and ugly for CARBO Ceramics in 1Q16…
Yesterday Baker Hughes released its first quarter 2016 update. According to BH CEO Martin Craighead, “the industry faced another precipitous decline in activity” in 1Q16, which means it wasn’t good for BH. The company reported that revenues were down 42% year over year during the first quarter. Ouch. The company list $981 million for the quarter, nearly $1 billion! Double ouch. The company, which maintains THE rig count everyone watches, said rig counts will stabilize in the second half of the year, but the company expects 2Q16 rig count numbers to slide another 30%, to all-time historic lows. Triple ouch. What about the Halliburton buyout of BH? The deal expires in two days on April 30. BH says beyond that date the merger agreement does not automatically terminate–they may decide to continue riding the merger horse. Time will tell. Here’s the BH update from yesterday…
A Washington County, OH man is not happy with Blue Racer Midstream’s construction work on a new pipeline in the area. Heavy rain washed out gravel used as fill for the project. The man was on his way home (rural area) and ran into a ditch because, he says, the work was not done well and is “destroying” area roadways. Here’s the story of a man, a car, a ditch and a rainy night…
Just a few years ago Halliburton, the second largest oilfield services company in the world, employed 600 people in its operation center located in Lycoming County, PA. Today? There are 40 working there. Some 200 of Halliburton’s Lycoming employees were laid off last Friday. Lycoming County is relatively rural with the city of Williamsport as its county seat. Losing 560 jobs, 200 of them in one go, is a huge blow to the area. We grieve with those who have lost their jobs–and with their families who depended on those jobs…
We knew that corporate raider Carl Icahn’s protege, Keith “Mini-Me” Meister, had been meddling in Williams since 2013 (see 
The partners in the Constitution Pipeline, including Williams and Cabot Oil & Gas, have come roaring back against Gov. Cuomo and his pusillanimous Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) after the DEC lied last Friday in announcing they would not grant stream crossing permits for the pipeline project. Yesterday Cabot, along with Williams, issued a STRONGLY worded rebuttal that says, in part that the DEC’s “stated rationale for the denial includes flagrant misstatements and inaccurate allegations, and appears to be driven more by New York State politics than by environmental science.” Flagrant misstatements is another way of saying the DEC lied, which is exactly what we said yesterday (see 
The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), charged with overseeing potential impacts on the Delaware River and the various tributaries that feed it, has once again stepped outside of its legal bounds. The PennEast Pipeline is a $1 billion, 118-mile pipeline from Luzerne County, PA to Mercer County, NJ–part of it through the Delaware River Basin area. In 2014 the DRBC tried to tell PennEast and its sponsors that the pipeline will need their approval before it can be built (see 
Last week midstream giant Kinder Morgan announced they didn’t have enough demand lined up for their proposed $3.3 billion Northeast Energy Direct (NED) pipeline and so they will suspend any more work on the project (see 
Last week Seventy Seven Energy (SSE)–the old Chesapeake Oilfield Operating unit that was spun into its own company a few years ago–announced it would soon declare bankruptcy (see