ETE & Williams Engage in More Posturing Before June 24 Deadline
The ongoing soap opera of whether or not Energy Transfer Equity really will buy Williams continues to play out. Yesterday ETE (and Williams) issued press releases announcing that Williams shareholders have until 5 pm on June 24 to provide their official voting documentation on the merger. ETE is careful to point out that Williams shareholders should hold on to their shares–not turn them in–until the merger is official and completed. ETE also says once they’ve voted on the merger, Williams shareholders can’t turn around and sell their Williams shares of stock until the final merger is either declared a “go” or a “no go.” The elaborate ands, ifs & buts in the ETE statement still leaves us wondering whether or not this is all just kabuki theater–a show–with no real intention of closing on the merger. Case in point: here’s what ETE’s lawyers said in yesterday’s announcement…
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Last July MDN told you that Talen Energy, an electric generation company based in Allentown, PA, had cut a deal to acquire MACH Gen, LLC, the owner of three natural gas-fired electric generating plants (see 
RigData is one of the oil and gas industry’s most trusted sources for information on drilling activity in the U.S. RigData provides details on drilling rigs–where they are, who’s operating them, what kind of well they’re drilling. RigData publishes reports daily, weekly and monthly. We’ve seen their web and mobile phone app–seriously cool stuff. The company has been around for 25 years. So it was like a fracking-induced earthquake to discover that RigData has been sold–to S&P Global Platts. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Here’s the earth-shaking announcement…
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…
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 
Last year midstream giant Energy Transfer Equity and its CEO Kelsy Warren pursued Williams, for months, and finally got Williams to agree to a deal to sell itself to Warren for $38 billion (see 
In March MDN reported that Canadian midstream giant TransCanada wants a bigger piece of the Marcellus/Utica midstream (i.e. pipeline) pie and has decided to buy Columbia Pipeline Group for $10 billion (see 
Yesterday MDN brought you the news that the Halliburton buyout of Baker Hughes is now officially dead (see 
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 
We knew that corporate raider Carl Icahn’s protege, Keith “Mini-Me” Meister, had been meddling in Williams since 2013 (see 
In March MDN told you that Canadian midstream giant TransCanada is making a play to buy American Columbia Pipeline Group for $10 billion/C$13 billion (see 
Somehow this bit of news escaped us a few weeks ago–perhaps because most of the impacts will happen in Oklahoma. Williams, the midstream giant that is currently being half-heartedly pursued by Energy Transfer Equity in a buyout/merger, is preparing for the eventual merger by laying off 10% of its workforce. Williams says they layoffs are due to “current market forces” and not because of the impending merger. Sorry–we don’t buy it. We suspect the layoffs have a great deal to do with trimming down before the company is eventually sold. Williams employs 6,700 people in North America and in late March they began dumping 10% (~670) of them. Some 100 of those layoffs are happening in the company’s Tulsa, OK headquarters. The others will come from across the country–including here in the Marcellus/Utica region…
A Delaware court has granted a motion by Williams to hurry-it-up with their recently filed lawsuit against Energy Transfer Equity (ETE)–the company trying to buy Williams. No, Williams is not trying to fend off the purchase. They’re trying to ensure Williams stockholders (and the managers of Williams) get the agreed-to price. Last week Williams sued ETE and its CEO Kelsy Warren for issuing private shares of stock to select investors to help finance the deal (see