Energy Companies | EQT Corp | Greene County (PA) | Industrywide Issues | Lease & Royalty Payments | Litigation | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA
Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against EQT for Nonpayment of Royalties
Yesterday two Pennsylvania residents filed what they hope will turn into a class action lawsuit against EQT, the largest natural gas producer in the U.S. The lawsuit claims EQT has not made required royalty payments to the two residents nor to many (hundreds? thousands?) others. The lawsuit claims, among other things, a violation of PA’s Minimum Royalty Act that guarantees payments to all rights owners of at least 12.5% of the value of the produced gas.
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Imagine Hershey Park getting fined for smelling like a Hershey’s chocolate bar. Or Starbucks getting fined because the businesses next door can smell the coffee. The Shell cracker plant is getting fined for smelling like…maple syrup? Last week residents in several Beaver County, PA municipalities neighboring the Shell ethane cracker complex reported smelling something like a strong whiff of maple syrup. Shell immediately hired a third-party investigator and believes they now know what caused the smell.
Reuters is reporting Chesapeake Energy has decided to elevate Domenic Dell’Osso Jr., the company’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO), to become the next Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Dom has been with the company, as its CFO, since 2008 when Aubrey McClendon was CEO. As near as we can tell Dom is the only surviving senior management person left in the company from the McClendon and follow-on Doug Lawler years.
For years anti-fossil fuelers have sought to make confidential safety information about the Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline public. Specifically, they want to reveal “blast radius” information in hopes of inflaming opposition against the pipeline in their near-religious effort to get the pipeline permanently shut down (see 
A healthy number of permits were issued to drill new shale wells across the Marcellus/Utica region last week. Pennsylvania issued 19 new permits in both southwest and northeast PA. Ohio issued 8 new permits, all of them to a single driller (Ascent Resources) for two well pads in two different counties. West Virginia issued 9 new permits–all but 2 of them were issued to Antero Resources in Tyler County.
A long-fought-over wastewater injection well in Plum Boro (Allegheny County, Pittsburgh suburb) finally opened for business earlier this year, having overcome all sorts of smears and slanders and lawsuits by the enviro-left (see 
States often get excited when the federal government deigns to hand out taxpayer money in dribs and drabs, a billion here and a billion there. Yet the best source of money to pump into an economy is private funds, invested by private companies. Private investment 
Yesterday we told you that a program would air last night on the Fox Business channel featuring Cameron Energy, a conventional oil driller in western Pennsylvania (see 
Lest you think we’ve been overstating the case that Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf wants to end the use of natural gas-fired electric power plants as evidenced by his actions in forcing the state to join the draconian Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax scheme, Wolf’s latest so-called climate plan will remove all doubt for you. Yesterday Wolf and his obsequious Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary Pat McDonnell released a 278-page “climate” plan that, among other things, essentially bans natural gas-fired power plants.
Five Big Green groups (some of them funded by foreign governments) led by one of the worst–the Sierra Club–are lobbying the Pennsylvania Environmental Quality Board (EQB) to force PA’s oil and gas drillers to prepay the full amount to decommission wells they drill today and likely won’t be played out for at least 30, maybe as much as 50 years from now. It’s yet another attempt to make drilling for natural gas and oil in the Keystone State so onerous, so expensive, drillers will give up.
On the topic of plugging old, abandoned (orphan) oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania, here’s an example of the oil and gas industry stepping up to do the right thing. Seneca Resources is paying to have a century-old conventional well plugged in McKean County, PA. It’s a well Seneca did not drill and has no responsibility to plug. Yet they are.
A sad exclusive to share with you today. Yesterday northeast Pennsylvania driller Rockdale Marcellus filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. The company, which owns and operates 66 producing wells on 42,897 net acres in three northeast PA counties (regional headquarters in Pittsburgh) plans to auction off all of its assets according to paperwork filed with the court.
If this doesn’t prove that the environmental left isn’t really interested in the environment, but instead only in their leftist (Communistic) policies, nothing will prove it to you. A radical faction of Physicians for Social Responsibility calling itself “Concerned Health Professionals of Pennsylvania” (a false statement if ever there was one) is actively, aggressively trying to end the ability of Pennsylvania’s fracking companies to recycle wastewater (brine) that comes from naturally-occurring water deep in the ground. They figure if they can stop fracking’s green recycling program, maybe they can shut down fracking period. Sick.
A nice bump up (finally) in the number of permits to drill new shale wells in the M-U, although it’s a lot of wells for a relatively few well pads. Pennsylvania issued 19 new permits across five pads in both the northeast and southwest portion of the play, including 8 permits for a single Cabot Oil & Gas pad in Susquehanna County. Ohio issued just 3 new permits, all to Encino Energy for a single pad in Carroll County. And West Virginia issued a surprisingly high 18 permits to two drillers on three pads in two counties: Marshall and Monongalia.