EQT Floats IPO to Sell Off Some Ownership of Midstream Division
Looks like the mad dash to raise cash has not yet ended. Major Marcellus driller and midstream company EQT announced yesterday they are, using a subsidiary company (EQT GP Holdings) floating an initial public offering of 20 million units (roughly equivalent to shares of stock). The new company, EQT GP, is a holding company that will invest the money it raises into EQT’s midstream operations. On paper EQT’s midstream operations are run by a different entity with the stock ticker symbol of EQM (EQT Midstream). It’s all under one roof, but split on paper for tax and high finance purposes. If you net it all out, it appears to us (warning: we are neophytes with this high finance stuff) that EQT is selling off some of the ownership of EQT Midstream without exactly saying so. How much does EQT hope to raise? They don’t say in the announcement (below). But EQM’s current stock price is running at $86.45 per share as of close of business yesterday. Let’s say EQT gets, oh, $70 per unit for this new IPO. That would be a huge $1.4 billion. What if they get just $50 per unit? That would be an even $1 billion. However you slice it, EQT is looking to raise some major cash by selling off ownership of EQM…
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Something troubling for MDN. The Constitution Pipeline, a 125-mile pipeline that will stretch from the gas fields of Susquehanna County, PA into New York–to Schoharie County, has been approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), a multi-year process. The only thing keeping Williams from starting up the backhoes and beginning to lay pipeline is New York State–specifically the state’s Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC). The DEC must grant what’s called a 401 Water Quality Certificate that allows the Constitution to lay pipe through and under swamps, creeks and other bodies of water. The DEC ran a series of public hearings on it, one of which MDN editor Jim Willis attended in January (see 
GreenHunter Resources continues to aggressively push back against the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) with respect to barging brine from shale wells. Yesterday was the latest flare-up in the war of words between GreenHunter and the USCG. Once again GreenHunter COO Kirk Trosclair said the way they read the rules, they have permission under existing 1987 rules to barge it. And once again the USCG said no you don’t–not until we say you do. The latest twist is that the USCG says that brine might have high levels of radioactivity and so now the Dept. of Homeland Security is reviewing the whole matter. Which is a neat way of corrupting the issue–just claim there’s a national security issue and that shuts it all down. Still, GreenHunter is committed to begin barge shipments this year. However, we also learned yesterday that those shipments will not originate at GreenHunter’s proposed facility near Wheeling, WV…
More troubling talk from Odebrecht about a proposed ethane cracker plant in Parkersburg, WV. In February, MDN brought you the first tremors in what until that point had been nothing but positive signs the project would move forward (see 
One more twist in what is shaping up to be a very long process to build the state’s largest electric generating plant powered by Marcellus Shale gas. Invenergy hopes to build the 1500-megawatt plant in the borough of Jessup (Lackawanna County), near Scranton, on an 80-acre former coal mine and landfill site (see