Carroll County | Columbiana County | Encino Energy | Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Lease & Royalty Payments | Litigation | Ohio
Ohio Landowners Sue Encino Energy for Shorting Royalties
Landowners in Carroll and Columbiana counties (Ohio) have filed a class action lawsuit against Encino Energy claiming the company underpaid oil and natural gas royalties. Last November Encino Acquisition Partners (i.e. Encino Energy) completed its purchase of all of Chesapeake Energy’s Ohio Utica Shale assets for $2 billion (see Stop Press: Chesapeake Sells ALL of its Ohio Utica Assets for $2B). The deal included all of Chesapeake’s 933,000 Ohio acres–with 320,000 net Utica acres–and 920 operated and non-operated Ohio Utica wells.
Read More “Ohio Landowners Sue Encino Energy for Shorting Royalties”
The stakes are about as high as it gets: “The immediate disruption of the natural gas industry,” says PennEast Pipeline. We’re referring to a terrible decision in September by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit that disallows PennEast from using the delegated power of eminent domain to cross properties either owned by, or with easements granted to, the state of New Jersey (see 
All we can say is, shame on FirstEnergy. They hired people to block petition gatherers trying to get signatures for a referendum for the November ballot. The tactics used can only be described as bullying–sometimes physical. Workers are trying to get enough signatures on a petition to place a referendum on the November ballot. The referendum, if adopted, would overturn House Bill 6 which grants a $1 billion bailout to FirstEnergy’s economically failing nuclear power plants (see 
Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York, is not only pathetic, he’s transparent. Over the past few weeks multiple people have criticized Cuomo for his no-new-pipeline policies that have lead to pain and suffering for some New York City and Long Island residents who cannot connect to natural gas because of a coming shortage. The New York Post, Wall Street Journal and other media outlets have piled on. So too have President Trump and EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. All in the past seven days! What does little Andy do? Blame shift.
Yesterday the Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee “reported out” (i.e. approved) Senate Bill (SB) 694, which is the Senate version of what was House Bill (HB) 247, a bill which allows fully leased parcels that are part of one drilling “unit” to be combined with parcels in a different unit–“cross unit drilling.” The full Senate voted to approve the bill on September 25 by a vote of 49-0 in favor. Yes, a unanimous vote, with both Republicans and Democrats voting to approve it in the Senate. We’re now one vote away from final passage–the full House. There’s little doubt it will pass.
The last time Equitrans talked about the status of its 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline project (from Wetzel County, WV to Pittsylvania County, VA) was July, when the company said the cost for the project had ballooned to $5 billion and the in-service date delayed until mid-2020 (see 
The fight to overturn Ohio’s House Bill 6, a $1 billion bailout (freebie) given to FirstEnergy to prop up its uneconomical nuclear power plants is getting nasty. Really nasty. We previously told you about FirstEnergy’s lying commercials that claim China controls the state’s natural gas industry–because a Chinese bank loaned some of the gas-fired plants money (see 
Andrew Cuomo, the man-child governor of New York, is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Or week. For the past few weeks the New York Post has repeatedly hammered Cuomo over his decision to block the Williams Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline project that would bring critical new supplies of natgas to Long Island and New York City. The Wall Street Journal also joined in by hammering Cuomo over the same issue, pointing out Cuomo is to blame for thousands of utility customers of National Grid who now cannot connect, yet Cuomo is forcing National Grid to add them anyway (see 
Yesterday Dominion Energy announced it has sold a 25% stake in the completed Cove Point, Maryland LNG export facility to Brookfield Asset Management for a cool $2 billion. Dominion completed the $4.1 billion facility in 2018. The share just sold to Brookfield values the facility at $8.22 billion. Holy smokes! Nice play–to double the value of your investment in not much more than a year after completing it. What will Dominion do with all that cash?
In April President Trump issued an Executive Order (EO) directing the Secretary of Transportation to write a new rule allowing specially constructed tanker cars for railroads (DOT-113 tank cars) to ship LNG, i.e., liquefied natural gas (see 
Natural gas end-users, which include American households, businesses, manufacturers, and electric power generators, have realized $1.1 trillion in savings since 2008 as a result of increased natural gas production in the Marcellus/Utica region, according to a new report released yesterday. You read that right! Folks across the country have benefited by using M-U gas to the tune of $1.1 trillion in savings. Astonishing! The new report (full copy below) says the total savings works out to be an average of $4,000 per household. Thank God for fracking and horizontal drilling in the Marcellus/Utica.
Earlier this month Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf went completely off his rocker with a power-grab to force PA into a regional alliance to tax natural gas-fired electric plants out of existence (see 
A recent editorial written by the editors of the Wall Street Journal begins with this superb sentence: “New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has a habit of bullying others to cover for and fix his policy blunders.” It goes on to rip Cuomo to shreds for his bullying of National Grid, forcing the company to add new natural gas customers against its wishes because come wintertime, they may not have enough gas to service all customers in the Greater New York City/Long Island region. Why a moratorium on new customers? Because Cuomo denied National Grid a pipeline to supply the gas they need–the Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline.
Eureka Resources, which owns and operates a centralized treatment/recycling facility in Bradford County, PA to process Marcellus watewater, is getting a $1.5 million state Redevelopment Assistance Capital Projects grant to help the plant launch a high tech solution to recover lithium from Marcellus wastewater. Yes, lithium, like that used to manufacture rechargeable batteries.