Chesapeake Energy | Energy Companies | Epsilon Energy | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Pennsylvania | Susquehanna County
TX Judge Allows Epsilon to File New Lawsuit Against Chesapeake in PA
Last week MDN told you that Epsilon Energy, which concentrates most of its effort on the Marcellus in Susquehanna County, PA, had sued its joint venture partner Chesapeake Energy over Chessy’s refusal to allow Epsilon to drill four shale wells on land Chessy doesn’t want to drill (see Epsilon Sues Chesapeake to Drill 4 Marcellus Wells, Court Overrules). We also told you the Texas bankruptcy judge that presided over Chesapeake’s recent Chapter 11 case ordered Epsilon to drop its lawsuit. The Texas judge has since modified his position.
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All three M-U states received permits to drill new shale wells last week. Pennsylvania received 6 new permits (4 of them for Chesapeake Energy). Ohio received 4 new permits last week, all of them for Antero Resources (2 different well pads). And West Virginia received 4 new permits (3 of them for Southwestern Energy).
Some days it’s tough. You try to keep your head held high, but then you read of someone you (used to) highly respect, someone like former Secretary of the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection, Mike Krancer, who now supports Pennsylvania being forced to join the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which is nothing more than an obscene carbon tax that would force gas-fired power plants out of existence. Krancer bases his support on the flimsiest of excuses: That the tax revenues raised by RGGI (coming out of the pockets of ALL Pennsylvanians) will help plug a few more of the hundreds of thousands of old/abandoned conventional oil and gas wells throughout the state. Really Mike?
Epsilon Energy concentrates most of its effort on the Marcellus in Susquehanna County, PA. Epsilon doesn’t typically do its own drilling. The company joint venture partners with (gives money to) other companies, like Chesapeake Energy, and the other company typically does the drilling. Just yesterday our headline story was about Epsilon suing Chesapeake over Chessy’s refusal to honor a jv agreement and allow Epsilon to drill four wells in Susquehanna County, PA (see 
For years PA’s small, independent conventional oil and gas drillers have objected to the one-size-fits-all regulations concocted by the Wolf DEP that applies the same regulations to small conventional drillers as those used for big shale drillers. The two types of drilling are apples and oranges. Making small conventional drillers jump through the same hoops as big shale drillers will bankrupt many of the smaller companies. As in previous years, a bill will soon be introduced to separate the regulations for the two…
In our opinion, we have yet to fully understand the long-term, permanent changes in society that have happened because of the COVID-19 pandemic. There are signs that things have permanently changed. For example, a significant number of people now work from home rather than commute to an office in downtown. Many workers like working from home better! In a signal that COVID long-term changes are impacting the Marcellus/Utica industry, two major M-U companies with office space in the Southpointe business park (Pittsburgh suburb in Washington County) are shopping a collective 213,000 square feet of office space they no longer need because their workers have permanently relocated to home offices.
Eureka Resources currently operates three frack wastewater treatment facilities in the Marcellus Shale, two in Williamsport (Lycoming County), PA (where the company is headquartered), and one in Wysox (Bradford County), PA. In October 2019 the company began extracting lithium from Marcellus wastewater at its Wysox facility (see 
Olympus Energy, the renamed Huntley & Huntley Energy Exploration (HHEX), concentrates its drilling in the Pittsburgh suburbs, including Upper Burrell and Allegheny Townships in Westmoreland County, PA. Olympus has just cut a $1.2 million deal with the Municipal Authority of the City of New Kensington to extend three miles of waterlines near three Marcellus well sites in Upper Burrell and Allegheny Townships.
We don’t write much about Alta Resources, a shale drilling company co-founded by the inventor of shale fracking, George Mitchell. But that doesn’t mean Alta doesn’t drill in the Marcellus. In 2020 Alta was in the Top 10 PA drillers list (see 
In May 2020 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case challenging whether or not the state Attorney General’s office has the right to use a consumer protection law to prosecute companies like Chesapeake Energy and Anadarko over royalty payment shenanigans (see