Halliburton/Baker Hughes Hold a Pre-Merger Garage Sale
Halliburton and Baker Hughes are having a pre-merger garage sale. In order for Halliburton to buy Baker Hughes, a deal worth $34.6 billion (see Shotgun Wedding: Halliburton Forces Baker Hughes to Sell), regulators are requiring both companies to shed more of their divisions and subsidiaries. Halliburton’s expandable liner hangers business is on the table. So too is Baker Hughes’ “core completions business,” which includes: packers, flow control tools, subsurface safety systems, intelligent well systems, permanent monitoring, sand control tools and sand control screens. And there’s more on the table, marked down for a quick sale. Because of the additional businesses that must be sold, the wedding/merger date for the two companies may get pushed back to early 2016. Halliburton and BH hope some of their competitors will stop by and pick something up at the pre-merger garage sale…
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Low energy Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush (as Donald Trump calls him) has decided to inject some high energy (as in the energy industry) into his campaign. Jeb is today visiting the Pittsburgh headquarters of one of the Marcellus/Utica’s most successful drillers–Rice Energy–to unveil his energy plan that calls for the lifting of the crude oil export ban (something our Dear Leader, President Obama, opposes) and for the approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline (Obama also opposes). However, the thing that makes Jeb’s visit to Rice Energy salient and meaningful for the Marcellus/Utica is that he will call for (a) lifting restrictions on exporting natural gas–making it easier to export natgas to Japan, China and European countries, and (b) fight Obama’s Clean Power Plan (CPP). There is no doubt Bush will say all of the right words and espouse policies the oil and gas industry can strongly support. The question is, will he actually do any of it if he gets elected?…
On January 9, 2014, a Freedom Industries facility next to the Elk River leaked ~10,000 gallons of crude 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol (MCHM) used in coal mining into the river, which is a tributary to the Kanawha River that runs through Charleston, WV. The results of that leak were dramatic. Some 300,000 residents from nine counties in the Charleston metropolitan area were without access to potable water for five days. Several Freedom Industries officials are now in jail and the company went bankrupt because of that single accident. Contrast coverage of that accident with another accident–caused by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at the Gold King Mine in Colorado. EPA personnel were fiddling around “testing” at a gold mine wastewater storage impoundment and accidentally unplugged it, dumping 3 million gallons of some of the nastiest wastewater you can imagine–with lead, arsenic and other heavy metals–into the Animas River north of Silverton, CO (see 
It takes guts to walk boldly into the liberal lion’s den and tweak the nose of the beast. That’s what Marty Durbin, chief executive of America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA), has done with an editorial appearing in yesterday’s Boston Globe newspaper. Durbin has the audacity to tell readers that their high energy bills and constrained natural gas supplies is “self-imposed.” He also tells them they can believe whatever they want, but they can’t defy the laws of supply and demand and there is no arguing the fact that New Englanders pay high energy prices because they lack necessary natural gas supplies. Just a few hundred miles away natgas prices in the Marcellus are a fraction of what gas sells for in New England. Marty pours it on! He also says a recent study shows without new natgas supplies for New England, by 2020 the average consumer will pay almost $1,000 more per year in energy costs than they do today. Read Marty’s audacious editorial for yourself below, full of cold, hard truth. Let’s hope New Englanders will see the light–which happens to be a blue natural gas flame…
In February MDN told you about a deal signed by a hospital in Potter County, PA to lease 742.9 acres of hospital-owned land to JKLM Energy to drill Utica Shale wells (see 
Very interesting development with Halliburton. As we previously reported, Halliburton is forcing Baker Hughes to the alter in a shotgun wedding/takeover (see 
In February 2013 MDN brought you news about plans from Appalachian Resins (AR) to build a polyethelene (PE) manufacturing plant complete with a “baby” ethane cracker. The original plan was to build it in the Wheeling, WV area. However, a year later the location shifted across the border to Monroe County, OH. As late as April of this year AR was still committed to the project (see 
An update on a royalty lawsuit we first reported in July. Two Butler County, PA landowners with a combined 245.7 acres of land leased to (and drilled by) XTO Energy have sued XTO claiming the company is breaking the lease agreement by paying royalties below 1/8 of what XTO receives in revenue for the gas (see 
Analysts with global investment firm Jeffries are out with a forecast for natural gas production next year, in 2016. Jeffries says while natural gas production in the Marcellus/Utica will slow next year, they are the only two plays in the entire country that Jeffries says will still grow in production year over year. However, overall the U.S. will produce slightly less gas in 2016 than we will have in 2015–with production estimated to decline by 0.8% (less than a single percentage point)…
CoBank, a national cooperative bank serving vital industries across rural America, has just published a study titled “U.S. Natural Gas Outlook through 2020: Demand Is the New Captain of the Ship” in which they predict the United States will become a net exporter of natural gas in 2017. While we don’t have a copy of the full report, we do have a summary below listing the key points in the report, along with a video…
One New England town shows how to “do it right” when it comes to dealing with a big pipeline company like Kinder Morgan. As we’ve covered (endlessly), Kinder’s Northeast Energy Direct (NED) project will expand the mighty Tennessee Gas Pipeline to run across parts of Massachusetts and New Hampshire before terminating near Boston. Anti-fossil fuel nutters demand the project be canceled–sentencing New Englanders to obscenely high gas and electric rates forever. One town–Amherst, NH–had concerns about the route and worked with Kinder Morgan to get the pipeline shifted to a route that works for them. This is how adults behave…
The Obama Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be in Pittsburgh tomorrow to conduct a hearing into how they can illegally regulate oil and gas drilling through the back door of so-called “fugitive” methane emissions, which they claim are insanely high in shale plays like the Marcellus/Utica (
We don’t like bashing Pope Francis–honest. We have a very healthy respect for the Catholic Church. But Pope Francis is a Marxist–and he’s pedaling Marxist dogma instead of Christian dogma and he needs to be called out for it. During the Pope’s visit to the U.S. this past week, mainstream liberal media went wall to wall with the visit–euphoric over his pronouncements on the environment and his belief in the fairy tale of man-made global warming. Pope Francis is a big hit with godless atheists in this country–which should tell you something. We spotted a refutation of the Pope’s misguided philosophies when it comes to dumping fossil fuels, offered by the bright minds at The Heartland Institute. We found their comments to be spot on and the best possible refutation and correction of the errors delivered by il Papa during his U.S. visit…
Party time! Yesterday PennEast Pipeline filed their full, official application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for permission to commence building their $1 billion, 118-mile, 36-inch diameter pipeline that will deliver approximately 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day from the Marcellus gas fields of northeastern PA to locations in southeastern PA and across the border to Trenton, NJ. The long-term benefits to the pipeline are many–lower natural gas and electricity costs for millions of consumers. In addition, during construction the pipeline will generate an estimated $1.6 billion of economic impact during design and construction alone, supporting approximately 12,160 jobs and an associated $740 million in wages. This is good news for all Pennsylvanians and New Jerseyites. Of course anti-fossil fuel nutters also issued an angry press release claiming the PennEast Pipeline will do “irreparable harm” if built…