Technip & FMC Technologies Shareholders Vote Dec 5 on Merger
In May, U.S.-based oilfield services company FMC Technologies announced 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 (see FMC Technologies & Technip to Merge, Create $13B Oilfield Giant). FMC had/has some operations in the Marcellus/Utica, hence the merger has implications for our region. The Obama Dept. of Justice approved the deal in June (see FMC Technologies/Technip Merger Approved by Obama DOJ/FTC). Apparently it’s A.O.K. for a French company to buy an American company, but when one American company (Halliburton) wanted to buy another (Baker Hughes), that wasn’t OK with the Obamadroids (see (see Obama DOJ Kills Halliburton/Baker Hughes Merger, Deal “Terminated”). But we digress. On Dec. 5 shareholders in both companies will vote on the deal. If they vote “yes,” as it expected, the deal with close and the two will have their nuptials in early 2017…
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MDN has highlighted the importance of the Ohio Supreme Court’s decision with regard to the Ohio Dormant Mineral Act (DMA). In September the OH Supreme Court ruled in three DMA cases, saying all of the other cases come under those three (see 
As soon as Donald Trump secured victory in Tuesday’s presidential election, the hew and cry went up from radical environmentalists that his election spells the end of Mom Earth. Trump is rightly skeptical of claims that mankind is causing a catastrophic warming of the earth–namely because there’s no evidence to support it. No objective “average” temperature data that shows the earth warming up by burning fossil fuels, as is the claim. But global warmers, who have changed their name to climate changers, won’t listen to reason. Their belief in man-made global warming surpasses the fervency of belief by most people in a Supreme Being (i.e. God). Global warming is their religion, and no amount of discourse and debate will convince them otherwise. So when Trump, a “climate denier” as they call him, won–it was for them a disaster. Barack Hussein Obama has been the warmers’ best friend. But there’s a problem with the way Obama achieved his environmental agenda–he did it by fiat. By executive orders. By using executive branch agencies like the EPA and BLM and others to implement his wishes apart from having those wishes enacted in legislation. And what one president can do with executive orders, another can undo with executive orders. Obama’s entire environmental agenda is built on sand–a house of cards. And it’s about to gloriously come crashing down with President Trump. And that fact has warmers sweating…
As we pointed out to you last December, evil corporate raider Carl Icahn (invests in companies so he can fire a bunch of people, boost the stock and pocket the profit) had fired Cheniere Energy CEO Charif Souki (see 
Donald Trump’s victory in winning the presidency–whether you voted for him or not–is a victory for the oil and gas industry. Fracking is now not in danger of being banned, as it would have been with Hillary Clinton. The Washington “swamp” (“wetland” for greenies) as Trump and his running mate Mike Pence call it–is about to get drained. That includes the rogue, out-of-control Environmental Protection Agency, among others. Radical environmentalists are shocked and suicidal. We’re delighted! The people of this country have spoken…
On Oct. 8, after five years in the making, Pennsylvania adopted new shale drilling regulations (see 
As MDN reported in June, anti-drilling zealots in Youngstown, OH filed a petition to place a frack ban resolution on the November ballot–for the 6th time (see 
We’ve written plenty in the past about the PA-based radical anti-drilling group called CELDF–Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (
The Sierra Club, which may have been founded for good reasons, long ago left the realm of sanity. Sierra Clubbers, as we call them, now live in an alternative universe where clean-burning natural gas and all fossil fuels are from the devil himself. The Clubbers have tried to get multiple LNG (liquefied natural gas) export facilities blocked on the theory that if you cut off the demand you can cut off the supply (i.e. end fracking of new wells). Yeah, crazy. But that’s what they’re trying. Lately they’ve tried to attack and bully both the Dept. of Energy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. With legions of lawyers, they file frivolous lawsuit after frivolous lawsuit, hoping if they throw enough legal (ahem) feces against the wall, some it will stick. So far it hasn’t. One of the facilities the Sierra Club continues to fight against is Cove Point LNG in Maryland. They filed an appeal of a Dept. of Energy approval to allow Cove Point to export LNG to non-free trade agreement countries–namely Japan and India. Yep, the Sierra Club doesn’t want us to help out Japan or India. They’d rather have us help Saudi Arabia and Qatar, apparently. After the appeal went nowhere, the Clubbers have no sued in the uber-liberal D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Thing is, that very same court recently handed the Sierra Club a defeat in a similar case…
In May 2015 the Obama rogue Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) along with the Obama U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) released a finalized rule clarifying what “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) means vis a vis what can be regulated under the federal Clean Water Act (see 
MDN first told you about IMG Midstream in August 2014 (see 
While the worldwide Baker Hughes rig count slide back a bit in October, from 934 in September to 920 in October, the rig count in the U.S. once again, for the fourth month in a row, went up. The average U.S. rig count for October was 544, up 35 from the 509 counted in September. However, the rig count was down 247 from the 791 counted in October 2015–so we still have a long ways to go. The Marcellus/Utica rig count was up for the third month running. In October the M/U rig count went up by 4 with 3 additions in PA (now 25 rigs) and 1 in WV (now 10 rigs). OH stayed even running with an average of 14 rigs…