Energy Services

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    FERC OKs Tree-Cutting for Constitution Pipeline – in PA

    In a crushing blow to anti-drilling radicals who have tried their best to stop the Constitution Pipeline, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has granted Williams, builder of the Constitution, permission to begin cutting down trees along the pipeline’s path in Pennsylvania. Williams still cannot fell trees in New York State, where the bulk of the pipeline will be built. However, FERC would not grant permission for PA unless they intend to grant permission on the other side of the border too–and everyone knows it. Currently New York’s anti-drilling governor, Andrew Cuomo, is holding up the 125-mile project that will deliver natural gas from Susquehanna County, PA to Schoharie County, NY by connecting with two interstate pipelines. Cuomo is about to create a constitution crisis in which the federal government will be forced to overrule the state and allow the pipeline to be built. Cuomo is withholding stream crossing permits–the only thing left before bulldozers begin to clear a path. Cuomo is once again caving to pressure from his lunatic left base of supporters. And he’s about to turn New York into a third-rate state, controlled by the federal government, through his unwillingness to grant the permits…
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    Blue Racer Midstream: Keeping a Sharp Eye on the Bottom Line

    Blue Racer Midstream is a joint venture between Caiman Energy II and Dominion. It is a privately-held company, so we don’t have SEC reports and public statements about the company from which to gage how it’s doing. However, every now again Blue Racer’s upper management shows up at an industry conference. Last week Blue Racer’s relatively new CEO, Stephen Arata, spoke at the Hart Energy Marcellus-Utica Midstream event in Pittsburgh. It’s no surprise that Arata said the company has had to curb spending and growth, giving the downturn in oil and natgas prices…
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    Baker Hughes 4Q & Full 2015 Update: Blood Everywhere

    Yesterday oilfield services giant Baker Hughes (with a big presence in the Marcellus/Utica) released fourth quarter and full year 2015 results. There’s blood everywhere. Revenue for the year was $15.7 billion, down $8.8 billion compared to $24.6 billion for 2014, a 36% drop. Of course, average rig counts dropped 34% in 2015, so it’s no wonder revenues tanked–the service Baker Hughes provides was more than one-third less in demand. Looking at 4Q15 only, revenue for the quarter was $3.4 billion, down $3.2 billion (or 49%) compared to the fourth quarter of 2014. Ouch, there goes another arterial wound with blood pumping out on the floor. The good news, if there is any, is that the company kept expenses in check. According to Baker Hughes CEO Martin Craighead, “Despite this challenging environment, we generated $1.2 billion of free cash flow during the year, after more than $446 million of restructuring payments. This achievement was the result of our ongoing commitment to maintain capital discipline, as well as solid progress on initiatives to improve working capital.” As for the Halliburton shotgun wedding, Craighead said, “With regard to the merger, I continue to be extremely pleased with the efforts of our team supporting the regulatory review process and developing plans for a successful integration. We are fully dedicated to closing the merger as early as possible.” What’s ahead for 2016? “Looking ahead, we are forecasting rig activity worldwide to continue to decline throughout 2016. At current commodity prices, the global rig count could decline as much as 30% in 2016, as our customers’ challenges of maximizing production, lowering their overall costs, and protecting cash flows are now more acute.” Eeks, another bleeder. Below are select portions of yesterday’s bloody update…
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    Criminals Arrested Blocking Crestwood Seneca Lake Facility

    We Are Seneca Lake
    We Are Seneca Lake criminals being carted off in a paddy wagon

    When someone organizes and repeatedly shuts down a legal, functioning business with so-called “civil disobedience,” it’s not civil and it’s not an act of disobedience–it’s a crime. If you show up with a bunch of nutters to block the entrance to a facility once and the cameras are there to record it–you’ve made your point. Anti fossil-fuel radicals opposed to creating an underground propane storage facility in a depleted salt mine along the shore of Seneca Lake (in upstate New York) have recently stepped up their so-called civil disobedience at the facility–staging weekly blockades at the site three weeks in a row. One of those instances was on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, when Sandra Steingraber, so-called scholar in residence at Ithaca College (where she’s paid to agitate and never teaches a class) invoked the name of Dr. King attempting to tie the great civil rights struggle with anti-fossil fuel nuttery. It’s offensive. Below is a rundown, with the names of the latest criminals who have colluded to try and shut down a legal business, Crestwood Midstream, from operating the facility they own at Seneca Lake…
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    Energy Transfer Lowers 2016 Capital Budget by $750M

    Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), a huge midstream company in the process of buying out Williams, another huge midstream company, announced yesterday they are scaling back capital spending in 2016. Last November ETP forecast they would spend on the order of $4.95 billion in 2016. That number is now $4.2 billion after ETP identified $750 million in further cuts it will make to the budget…
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    Cuomo Needs to “Snap on a Pair” and Approve the Constitution Pipe

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    Constitution Pipeline Meeting in Afton – click picture for larger version

    “What do we want? Pipeline! When do we want it? Now!” It was a raucous crowd who gathered last Saturday in the tiny village of Afton, New York to show support for the Williams Constitution Pipeline project. The River Club in Afton was jammed with people–by our estimation some 250-300 people. The meeting was organized and hosted by the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York (JLCNY). The JLCNY’s attorney, Scott Kurkoski (from Levene Gouldin & Thompson LLP) began the meeting with a full-throated yell: “New York Can’t Wait!” That simple sentence summed up the focus of the rally. The Constitution Pipeline is fully permitted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The only thing holding up construction of the pipeline is a stream-crossing permit from New York State. The tail is wagging the dog. Speaker after speaker (politicians, business people, labor reps) outlined the reasons why New York State can no longer wait for Gov. Cuomo to continue his waffling on this project. The frustration with Cuomo and the DEC was palpable in the audience. Whenever Cuomo’s name was mentioned there were cat calls and boos. Perhaps the best line of the day, from all of the speeches, was uttered by Assemblyman Clifford Crouch. Cliff mentioned he had called the Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) just a few days prior to ask about the status of the permits. Without saying so, the DEC rep indicated the delay is not due to the agency itself. The implication was clear: Cuomo is holding it up. Crouch then said this: “We need to contact Snap-on Tools and get the governor a pair to snap on!” The crowd roared. They loved it!…
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    Halliburton’s Ugly 4Q15: Fired Another 4,000, Lost $28M

    Oilfield services giant Halliburton, with major operations in the Marcellus/Utica, released their fourth quarter and full year 2015 update yesterday. It wasn’t pretty. For the last three months of 2014, Halliburton made $901 million in net income. For the last three months of 2015, that number went to minus $28 million. There are a number of reasons for the big swing. The price of oil (and gas) tanked in 2015, and with it, drillers laid down rigs operated by Halliburton. Top line revenue–how much revenue came in–tanked in 4Q15. In 4Q14 Halliburton’s total revenue was $8.77 billion, and in 4Q15 the number was $5.08 billion. Add in higher impairment costs (a permanent devaluing of a company’s assets on paper), costs related to laying off another 4,000 workers in 4Q15, costs related to buying Baker Hughes, etc., and the numbers for Halliburton are ugly. Total revenue for full year 2015 was $23.6 billion, a decrease of $9.2 billion, or 28%, from 2014. Reported operating loss for 2015 was $165 million, compared to reported operating income of $5.1 billion for 2014. Even so, Halliburton’s president Jeff Miller puts a happy face on and says the company is doing better than its peers…
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    Schlumberger’s Ugly 4Q15: Fired Another 10,000, Lost $1B

    Schlumberger, the world’s largest oilfield services company, released its full year and fourth quarter 2015 update last week. Like Halliburton, which we also report on today, Schlumberger was hit hard in 2015 with the slowdown in drilling. Revenue in 4Q14 for Schlumberger was $12.6 billion. In 4Q15 their revenue was $7.7 billion. Ouch. Schlumberger had a net income loss for 4Q15 of $1 billion, whereas they made $302 million of profit in 4Q14. While Halliburton laid of 4,000 people in 4Q15, Schlumberger laid of another 10,000 people. So that’s a cumulative 14,000 people out of jobs in the last three months of last year–from just two companies. With all of the bad news, Schlumberger, unlike Halliburton, did turn a profit last year. When you look at all of 2015, Schlumberger made just over $2 billion in profit, whereas Halliburton lost $165 million for the year…
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    Williams Slashing 2016 Capital Budget by $1B

    While Marcellus/Utica midstream giant Williams won’t release a full financial and operating update until Feb. 17, yesterday the company did release the outlines of spending plans for 2016 yesterday. The big news from that announcement is this: Williams will spend $1 billion less on capital projects in 2016 than it did in 2015–a 32% decrease. In 2015 Williams spent, in round numbers, $3 billion on capital projects. In 2016 that number will be $2 billion. The reason? The slowdown in drilling. Here’s yesterday’s announcement…
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    Laurel Mountain Drilling First Well in Western PA – It’s a Utica

    Laurel Mountain Energy logoOne of our ace tipsters alerted us that Laurel Mountain Energy, a relatively new E&P (exploration and production) company is firing up a drilling rig to drill one, possibly two new Utica wells in Pennsylvania. You may recall MDN brought you the news one year ago that Laurel Mountain, essentially a reborn Vista Resources with big money backing from TPH Partners (Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co.), had formed and set up headquarters in Pittsburgh (see “New” Pittsburgh Company Forms to Target Marcellus/Utica in W PA). Since that time we’d not heard anything about Laurel Mountain Energy–until now. Below we’ve pieced together information from our tipster and from the forthcoming edition of the Marcellus and Utica Shale Databook…
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    Con Edison Becomes a Partner in Mountain Valley Pipeline

    The $3.5 billion Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) stretching from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA filed an official application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last October (see Mountain Valley Pipeline Files FERC Appl, Now Just Matter of Time). It’s now working its way through the process. Along the way, the number of project partners expanded from the original EQT and NextEra Energy to include WGL Holdings, Vega Energy Partners, and RGC Resources. You can now add one more partner: Consolidated Edison. Con Edison is purchasing a 12.5% interest in the pipeline and at the same time signed a 20-year deal to buy/move 250,000 dekatherms per day of natural gas on the pipeline. In a related deal, Con Edison also agreed to a 20-year firm transportation agreement for 250,000 dekatherms per day on the Equitrans system, located in northern West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania, providing more direct access to supply resources upstream of MVP…
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    US Forest Service Blocks Atlantic Coast Pipeline in National Forests

    Cow Knob Salamander
    Cow Knob Salamander

    In the end it was the cow nobs and red spruce that have slowed down Dominion’s $5 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina. Specifically, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) has refused to grant Dominion a special permit to cross teeny tiny sections of the Monongahela and George Washington national forests in West Virginia and Virginia. Why? Because of concerns about cow knob salamanders, northern flying squirrels and red spruce trees. Just last November MDN told you that Dominion and ACP were bending backwards, forwards and sideways to avoid running through cow nob salamander territory (see Dominion Files Pipeline Route Change to Avoid Salamanders, Swamp). Apparently the USFS doesn’t think Dominion’s plan is good enough. It’s now back to the drawing board to see where, in those regions, ACP can safely be run to avoid radical environmentalist demands. Of course the answer is “no where” as they are always unreasonable about these things. There is no “how can we work this out to your satisfaction” when it comes to nut cases. The antis simply demand, like petulant children, that you not do it at all. Which is just what the other side is now saying about ACP…
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    OSU Prof “Optimistic” that OH Ethane Cracker Will Get Built

    There’s not much new news to report on any of the three ethane cracker plants announced as being thought-about for the Marcellus/Utica. Those three are Shell’s project planned for Beaver County, PA, Odebrecht’s project announced for Wood County, WV, and PTT Global’s project announced for Belmont County, OH. Both the Shell and PTT projects appear to still have a pulse. WV’s does not. Hey, just keeping it real. One professor at Ohio State University says he is an “optimist” regarding the PTT project, for a number of reasons. When an OSU prof is optimistic, it gives us reason to be optimistic too! Here’s the reason our OSU prof believes the PTT Global ethane cracker will get built…
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    MA Town Plans to Raise Taxes to Oppose 1 Mile of NED Pipeline

    Part of the Kinder Morgan expansion of the Tennessee Gas Pipeline in New England, called Northeast Energy Direct (NED) is due to go through the Town of Warwick, MA. Warwick sits on the Massachusetts/New Hampshire border. Town leaders are opposed to the pipeline running through their town. In order to fight it, the town has opened a voluntary fund that residents can contribute to, to help with legal fees. Apparently the town “fathers” (and “mothers”) don’t have much hope anyone is going to contribute, because they want to allocate money from the town–and raise residents’ taxes in order to do it. Some Warwich residents aren’t thrilled with the prospect, since they’re already taxed up to the eyeballs. Here’s the kicker: Only about one mile of pipeline will traverse the Town of Warwick. They want to soak taxpayers to oppose a project that’s one mile of pipeline. Really? Are they really that radicalized against fossil fuels?…
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    Seventy Seven Energy’s Stock Threatened with Delisting from NYSE

    Last week we told you that Seventy Seven Energy, the former Chesapeake Oilfield Operating division of Chesapeake, spun off into its own company on July 1, 2014, had hired a “turnaround” company to help it, well, turnaround…financially (see Seventy Seven Energy Hires Turnaround Expert, Hopes to Stay Afloat). Perhaps we now know why. Yesterday Seventy Seven notified the world that the New York Stock Exchange has sent them a warning that their stock has fallen below minimum standards for continued listing on the exchange–unless they turn it around, fast. We’re not sure whether or not that will happen. Last week when we told you the company had hired a turnaround expert, their stock was trading at 60 cents per share. As of end of trading yesterday, that number was 48 cents per share. Last week the company’s market capitalization (how much the company is worth on paper) was $45.4 million. As of yesterday, the company’s marketcap was $21.13 million…
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    Rally to Support Constitution Pipeline in Afton, NY Tomorrow

    comejoinus.jpgAs we’ve previously mentioned, a few times, there will be a meeting tomorrow in Afton, NY to support the Constitution Pipeline. The Joint Landowners Coalition of New York (JLCNY) is sponsoring this rally to support the Constitution. MDN editor Jim Willis plans to be there–and we hope you do too. Meeting details are listed below. It’s time–in our opinion long past time–to sue the state and force the issue. It’s time to build the Constitution Pipeline!…
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