3 Outta 4 Proxy Firms Recommend “Yes” Vote for Williams Merger
Yesterday MDN brought you a story of how the Williams/Energy Transfer Equity merger defies logic (see Williams/ETE Merger Defies Logic – Here’s Why). Part of that story deconstructs the support for the deal by proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS). The analyst we quote in that article says ISS is buying Williams’ line that Williams’ assets after a merger with ETE will produce boatloads of cash and profit for the newly merged company, while the very same assets apart from the merger won’t. Even though the merged company will have an enormous load of new debt following the merger. It defies logic. And yet, Williams has found two more proxy advisory firms who are now willing to go on the record, like ISS, in support of the merger. What do they see that we don’t? Tune in to this episode of As the (Midstream) World Turns…
Read More “3 Outta 4 Proxy Firms Recommend “Yes” Vote for Williams Merger”
The Sierra Club is one of the worst, most radical Big Green groups in existence. We sincerely hope you never give them a penny of your money. They don’t care a whit about the environment–they only care about feeding the beast, money for their own organization. One way to do that is to keep your name in the news constantly. And a way to do that is by filing frivolous lawsuits. The Sierra Club has been railing against the Cove Point LNG export facility being built by Dominion for years (see 
LNG, or liquefied natural gas, is an increasingly important part of the natural gas ecosystem in the U.S. We’ve imported natgas for years–and we’re not beginning to export it as well. Each month the U.S. Dept. of Energy issues a report tabulating both imports and exports of LNG–who shipped it in and out, from where, and how much. It’s a good picture. The April report was recently released (takes a few months before the number crunchers are done). What do we find in the latest report (full copy below)? We find that the U.S. imported 34.8 billion cubic feet (Bcf) of natural gas in the first four months of the year–all of it from Trinidad. We exported 28.9 Bcf during the same period. The vast majority of exports were from Cheniere’s Sabine Pass terminal in Louisiana, although a small amount of LNG was exported from American LNG’s export facility in Miami, Florida…
There is something about the proposed merger of Energy Transfer Equity and Williams that’s been bugging us. A uneasy feeling. Why is Williams trying so hard to make this deal happen–when they resisted it just as hard in the beginning? What changed? Why are they now insisting that ETE–who has gotten cold feet and wants out–go forward? Recently Williams published a letter from Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS)–a “leading proxy advisory firm”–recommending that shareholders in Williams vote “yes” on the merger with ETE (see 
An issue we’ve highlighted before and one we’d rather not talk about–but must–is the issue of layoffs in the Marcellus/Utica industry. A recent article in the Pittsburgh Times-Tribune paints a heart-wrenching picture of how layoffs are affecting places like Westmoreland County, where personal bankruptcies and home foreclosures are spiking due to energy industry layoffs…
Earlier this month MDN told you about five enviro gangsters who were arrested in Vermont for illegally chaining themselves to equipment to stop work on a new transmission pipeline–41 miles long–between Colchester to Middlebury (see 
We now know why the oil and gas industry has laid off some 200,000 people over the past few years–they’re not spending money. A new research report from powerhouse consulting firm Wood Mackenzie finds that global upstream development (i.e. drillers) have cut their spending from 2015-2020 by 22%. If you role in cuts to conventional drilling, the total amount cut from budgets (worldwide) from 2015-2020 is a staggering $1 trillion! One of the biggest expenses in a drilling operation is human resources–people. Unfortunately we don’t have a copy of the £1000 (~$1,500) report to share with you. But we do have a high level overview provided by Wood Mackenzie…
It will be fun to watch how anti-fossil fuelers will take this news–and attempt to spin and demagogue it. Blue Racer Midstream, a joint venture between Caiman Energy II and Dominion, owns several natural gas processing and fractionation plants, 650 miles of natgas gathering pipelines, and 155 miles of NGL and condensate pipelines in OH and WV. Blue Racer is a privately-held company, so we don’t have SEC reports and public statements about the company. However, every now again Blue Racer’s upper management shows up at an industry conference, as they did a few weeks ago at the Utica Midstream Seminar in Canton, OH (see 
The Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) has just issued production numbers for the first quarter of 2016. Compared with first quarter 2015, production numbers in 1Q16 continue to impress. Natural gas production from shale is up 80% year over year, and oil production is up 24% y/y. Below we have the ODNR’s high level overview of the numbers, along with MDN’s own exclusive analysis showing: the top 25 producing gas wells, the top 25 producing oil wells, and then the top 25 gas and oil wells as ranked by average production per day. There is a difference! The longer an oil or gas well is online, the less it produces. Newer wells produce more. So we show you which wells are not just producing the most quantity overall, but which wells are producing at the fastest (most productive) rates–even if they haven’t yet been online a full three months. We also include a link to the complete list of 1,351 wells included in the 1Q16 ODNR report–in a more usable format than that provided by the ODNR…
On Friday Williams issued a couple of interesting press releases related to what they hope is a vote to accept Energy Transfer Equity’s offer of a merger. The first press release says the Williams board will pay shareholders 10 cents per share as a bonus if they vote “for” the merger. A little incentive. What we would call a bribe–although there’s nothing illegal about it. It smacks of desperation in our book. But perhaps we know why they’re offering a little more honey to entice people to vote “yes” for the merger. That’s because of the second press release. When the merger was first announced, both ETE and Williams claimed there would be “$2 billion in annual synergies” between the two companies following a merger (see 
West Virginia had a contentious budget battle this year. Why? Because severance tax revenue for coal and oil & gas was down–way down. With no hint of it improving any time soon. WV’s budget heavily depends on severance tax revenue for the state’s annual budget. Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin had to call a special session that last 17 days in order to get the budget passed. As part of that special session, new oil and gas rules from the WV Dept. of Environmental Protection were also passed. While the new rules don’t significantly alter existing regulations, the “subtle changes can lead to big headaches when enforced,” according to the legal beagles at Lewis Glasser Casey & Rollins. Here’s a quick overview of the changes, along with a copy of the full rule change document…
In 2011, the Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County, PA began a new water testing and monitoring program for the Beaver Run Reservoir which supplies water to about 150,000 residents (see