Halliburton Pays $18M in Back Wages, Some Going to PA Workers
Halliburton, the second largest oilfield services company in the world and a major presence in northeast drilling, performed a self audit of their 80,000+ employees and found that just over 1,000 (1.4%) of their employees were eligible for overtime but didn’t receive it. Some of those workers are in Pennsylvania Marcellus–39 of them in fact, who are owed a collective $800,000 in back wages. Halliburton turned themselves in to the U.S. Dept. of Labor, admitting the mistake and offering to make it right. The company reached an agreement with the DOL to pay $18,293,557 to 1,016 employees nationwide for uncompensated overtime, one of the biggest such cases “in recent years” according to the DOL…
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In early September MDN told you that the Massachusetts Dept. of Public Utilities (DPU) approved long-term contracts for three utilities–Berkshire Gas, National Grid and Columbia Gas–to buy natural gas supplies from Kinder Morgan’s Northeast Energy Direct (NED) pipeline–if it gets built (see 
At last week’s Shale Insight conference, MDN editor Jim Willis sat in on a few of the main sessions. One of those sessions was the opener on Wednesday–a panel discussion moderated by the inimitable and always interesting Michael Krancer, a partner at the Philadelphia-based Blank Rome law firm and formerly the Secretary of the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection during Tom Cobett’s administration. The panel discussion was titled “Philadelphia – The New Northeast Energy Hub” and featured an all-star lineup: Joe Colella, senior VP at Sunoco Logistics; Phil Rinaldi, Chairman and CEO at Philadelphia Energy Solutions; and John Walsh, President and CEO of UGI Corporation. Mike Krancer kicked off the session with a bold statement: He believes Philly will rival and soon pass Houston, Texas as the dominant energy hub in the United States…
MarkWest Energy has been fined $76,405 by the West Virginia Dept. of Environmental Protection (WVDEP) for a series of water quality violations in connection with projects they’ve built in West Virginia from 2013 to this year. In addition to the fine, MarkWest is required to submit a plan to correct problems that still exist. This isn’t the first time MarkWest has been to the WVDEP wood shed. In 2013 they were fined $306,000 for polluting a small stream near their new Mobley processing plant in Wetzel County (see 
Seems like just about every pipeline project out there is, in one way or the other, connected to the Marcellus/Utica Shale and moving northeast shale gas to other markets. Example: Yesterday Columbia Pipeline Group announced they have received Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approval to proceed with the Cameron Access Project in Southwest Louisiana. The $310 million project includes improvements to Columbia Gulf’s existing pipeline system, as well as ancillary facilities, a new compressor station near Lake Arthur, Louisiana, and the installation of an approximately 26 mile greenfield pipeline lateral in Cameron Parish that provides direct access to the Cameron LNG export facility. The purpose of the project? It “further connects abundant, but constrained, Appalachian supplies to higher value markets.” In other words, Columbia will offer a new export market for Marcellus/Utica gas via the Cameron LNG export terminal. The project is due to begin construction in the spring of 2016 and be placed in service during the first quarter of 2018…
Dominion’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) faces some stiff opposition from the anti-drilling, landed gentry class, along with opposition from the usual anti-fossil fuel nutters and even opposition from Obama-controlled agencies including the BLM, FWS and USFS (see our 
Finally! Some new takeaway capacity for Seneca Resources is about to become reality when they begin shipping Marcellus Shale gas from western Pennsylvania through Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) Niagara Expansion into western New York State where it will connect to the TransCanada Pipeline (in Niagara County, NY) and from there send the gas into Canada. In 2013 MDN brought you the good news that TGP would expand service on the pipeline northward (see 
The one ethane cracker plant project announced for the Marcellus/Utica region that once seemed the mostly likely to proceed now seems the least likely to move forward–the Brazilian-based Odebrecht project planned for Wood County, WV. The ASCENT (Appalachina Shale Cracker Enterprise) project seemed to have the most momentum in 2014 (see 
Something we’ve noticed for some time: When Magnum Hunter Resources (MHR) and its subsidiaries (like GreenHunter and Eureka Hunter) make a pronouncement like “such and such will be online next month” or “so and so asset will be sold this quarter” the timing rarely matches the pronouncement. For Magnum Hunter “the next few weeks” turns into “the next few months” and “sometime this quarter, maybe next” turns into “next year.” Somebody else has noticed MHR’s timeline peculiarity too–and has written about it on the Seeking Alpha investors website. This particular post notes that MHR’s CEO Gary Evans announced he would name the winning bidder in the “next week to 10 days” for the Eureka Hunter midstream subsidiary, a deal that will bring in something like $600-$700 million (see 
In March MDN told you the sad story that Canadian waterless fracking company GASFRAC had been sold to an unnamed third party after going bankrupt (see 
From time to time we highlight companies that get their line of credit/borrowing power reevaluated by their bankers. Usually we spot announcements from exploration and production (E&P) companies, otherwise known as drillers on MDN. Sometimes we spot such announcements for midstream (or pipeline) companies. The one we spotted from yesterday about made our eyes pop out–by far the biggest such line of credit we’ve seen for a company with major operations in the northeast shale area. Enterprise Products Partners, which built and operates the 1,230-mile Appalachia-to-Texas Express (ATEX) ethane pipeline from Ohio to the Gulf Coast, announced they got a bump up in their credit line of $500 million. They now have the power to borrow up to $5.5 BILLION (yes, with a “b”). They could buy a small country with that kind of money…
ET Rover is a 711-mile Marcellus/Utica natural gas pipeline that will serve mostly U.S. customers and will cost $3.7 billion to build and run from PA, WV and eastern OH through OH into Michigan and eventually into Canada (see 
Did Chesapeake Energy take Williams to the cleaners? Chesapeake Energy has just cut a deal with Williams to shave 25 cents per Mcf off their natural gas gathering fees in the Utica Shale (see this Shale Daily story: 
Kinder Morgan announced yesterday they are extending the current binding open season for the proposed Utica Marcellus Texas Pipeline (UMTP) project. Which is not a very good sign in our humble opinion. Before it was called the UMTP, Kinder Morgan’s proposed NGL pipeline, that will run from the Marcellus/Utica all the way to the Gulf Coast, was called the Y-Grade Pipeline and had its first binding open season at the end of 2013 (see 
Just a few weeks ago Dominion announced they will hand out $1 million in grants for housing, food and health care in the regions in which they operate (see