Titan Energy Sells Marcellus Assets, Buyer Rapidly Expanding
In February, MDN told you that Titan Energy, which used to be known as Atlas Energy/Resource Partners, was listing what appeared to be the rest of the acreage they still own on the Appalachian basin–some 494,229 acres–including rights for drilling in the Marcellus (see Titan Energy Puts 494K Appalachian Acres Up for Sale). On Friday, Titan announced it has signed an agreement to sell the acreage, along with 8,400 oil and gas wells across Pennsylvania, Ohio, Tennessee, New York and West Virginia, for $84.2 million to Diversified Gas & Oil (DGO). Yes, the vast majority of those wells are conventional (vertical only) and not shale wells. In fact, we’re not sure any of the wells are shale wells. However, Marcellus assets were part of the sale–so at least some of the acreage will allow for Marcellus drilling, should DGO want to pursue it. Although Titan is keeping its Utica Shale acreage, the company says it use the money from this sale to concentrate efforts on oil drilling in the Texas Eagle Ford Shale play. Titan is moving its headquarters from Pittsburgh to Houston, TX. In addition to the news about Titan selling its conventional assets and moving, the twin story (perhaps even more interesting) is that the buyer, DGO (nominally headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, although actually a UK company), has been on a buying spree–snapping up 75,250 conventional acres (1,300 wells) in PA & WV earlier this year. All told, DGO now owns 1.6 million acres of leases and 10,000+ conventional oil and gas wells in Appalachia…
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Yesterday Noble Energy dropped a bombshell that it has sold its 100% interest in 385,000 Marcellus/Utica acres and wells producing 415 million cubic feet equivalent of natural gas in West Virginia and Pennsylvania for $1.225 billion to “an undisclosed buyer.” That works out to be $3,181 per acre. Not included in the sale is Noble’s half operating interest in the CONE Midstream pipeline gathering system. It was just three years ago that Noble announced it would lease 138,000 feet in a new office building in Southpointe, and move in 200 employees (see 
As construction of the Mariner East 2 NGL (natural gas liquids) pipeline project heats up, thousands of Pennsylvanians are going back to work. Sunoco Logistics Partners (now called Energy Transfer Partners) said it would take some 8,000 workers to build the twin pipelines called Mariner East 2–from eastern Ohio through the state of Pennsylvania to the Marcus Hook refinery near Philadelphia. When Sunoco LP signed a deal to hire union workers for the pipeline, the deal stipulates half of the hires are local–from within PA. Sunoco has lived up to its word, as evidenced by the testimony of the Operating Engineer’s Union (Harrisburg) who has already seen 50 of its members hired to work on the project. What about the other half, the “foreigners” who come from other states? They’re brought in because of required specialized skills. But even the out-of-staters are welcomed–they’re adding big bucks to the local economy… 
It seems no matter how many times we calmly, rationally, factually respond to and refute the intellectual dishonesty around the issue of a severance tax in Pennsylvania, PA Democrats pop up to make the same already-refuted, debunked lies they spew, again and again. They must be of the opinion that if you repeat the same lies long enough, people will begin to believe them. And so a group of elected (and appointed) Democrat “leaders” gathered in Wilkes-Barre yesterday to rehash and repeat the same tired old lies about a severance tax. The organizer of the event was State Rep. Eddie Day Pashinski (Democrat from Wilkes-Barre) who stated at the event he doesn’t think the gas companies pay “their fair share.” That is such a bogus statement in so many ways. When did privately earned money suddenly belong to the state in the first place? Does Rep. Pashinski know that drillers already pay a severance tax–called an impact fee? And that by passing a severance tax on top of an impact fee, PA vaults to the top of the list–it would have the highest taxation of the industry in the United States at an effective rate of 9% (see 
Seems like every time we talk about Big Money foundations, those foundations (which are tax exempt) are far-left in philosophy and when they fund anything to do with the environment or education or business, it’s always with strings attached that said activity will have an anti-drilling bias. Need money for a new “study” to bash shale energy? Take your pick. In Philadelphia, there is the William Penn Foundation. In New York (and North Carolina) there’s the Park Foundation. And in Pittsburgh, the Heinz Foundation–run by Teresa Heinz Kerry (whom we call Mamma Teresa here on MDN). Hard left, all of them. So when we spotted an article about another Pittsburgh-based foundation–the Benedum Foundation–that is donating money to HELP the shale industry, well, we knew that’s a “man bites dog” story worthy of highlighting. The Benedum Foundation does a great deal of its grantmaking for science, technology, medical and engineering (STEM) education. Lately they’ve concentrated on training students who will, after school, land a job at someplace like CONSOL Energy, or the under-construction Shell ethane cracker plant in Beaver County. Although Benedum doesn’t spend nearly as much as the larger Heinz Foundation, we see Benedum as the antidote–a counterbalance–to some of the damage caused by Mamma Teresa and her married-into, huge piles of money that she spends to oppose shale energy…
Fire departments, schools, parks and townships are some of the 44 Pennsylvania organizations in 11 counties that will receive $326,800 in funding *this spring* from Williams–through its bi-annual community grant program. Grants up to $10,000 per organization are being awarded by Williams in communities where the proposed Atlantic Sunrise pipeline project will be constructed and operated. This is the fifth round of grants for areas that will host or be affected by the Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline. All together (including this latest round of $326,800), Williams has now given away $1.79 million to communities on behalf of Atlantic Sunrise. Now that’s something worth celebrating! Is your organization eligible? Grant applications are available at 
More fake “research” is on the way courtesy of the anti-drilling Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project. The Project is launching a so-called public health registry. Log in to the website and if you live within five miles of a drilling site, you can report your latest headache in an attempt to link it to (and smear) shale development. Yep, just blame everything on drilling. Got allergies? Blame drilling. Headache? Blame drilling. Earache? Blame drilling. Er, a “performance issues?” Blame drilling. (Maybe they’ll give you some free Viagra.) That’s the purpose of this latest sham initiative by the same group that has brought us such glittering examples of “research” as “The List of the Harmed”…
Truly maddening. A Pennsylvania farming family has had to put up with Chesapeake Energy’s lame justifications for not paying them a dime in royalties over the past two years, even though Chesapeake continues to extract gas from their property. Chesapeake claims that since 2015, their costs to extract/sell gas from Russ Forba’s land exceeded any revenue generated–by $112,000. Chesapeake promised Forba that the company would not try to recoup those “costs” from future royalties. The company just broke its promise. On Monday, Forba received a statement from Chesapeake revising the price of the gas sold (down), and revising the post-production costs claimed (up) for the month of April 2015. Chesapeake then deducted the extra $5,700 “loss” from current royalty payments to cover the difference–something they PROMISED would never happen. This is why PA landowners are incensed and calling for legislation. We don’t blame them…
As previously reported, liberal Pennsylvania House of Representatives Democrat Pam Synder has now introduced a bill (HB 1283, copy below) to “clear up” what the state Public Utility Commission (PUC) is a loophole in the Act 13 law that may allow some drillers to avoid paying impact fees (i.e. drilling taxes) on some Marcellus Shale wells (see 
For the past couple of years MDN has covered the issue of low and no royalties for landowners in Pennsylvania and other states because of the low commodity price for natural gas–and because drillers are deducting post-production expenses. The problem, from the landowner’s perspective, is that gas is still getting pumped–and they aren’t getting anything in royalties. Who would sign up for that?! The problem, from the driller’s perspective, is that they’ve spent big bucks to drill the well and even if they have to sell the gas at a loss, at least they’re getting some revenue through the door–hoping to hang on until prices go higher again. It is a conundrum. Last month the Pennsylvania Chapter of the National Association of Royalty Owners (NARO) held their annual meeting and convention in State College, PA. A number of interesting bits of information came out of that meeting. One interesting tidbit: A Houston lawyer told attendees that he is now using the strategy of telling drillers if they keep sending royalty statements with no checks (i.e. statements showing the driller is not making a profit)–they have 30 days to terminate their lease with those landowners. Some leases (not all) state that if a well quits producing profitable quantities of gas, the lease is officially ended. While in some respects the lawyer’s innovative interpretation of o&g contracts may be an empty threat, the strategy does appear to be getting results. Another tidbit: There is a concern that drillers may try to deduct losses today from profits in the future–from a landowner’s royalty check. What can landowners do to guard against it?…
MDN friend Tom Shepstone has long pointed out the incestuous connection between THE Delaware Riverkeeper and the William Penn Foundation. William Penn is a nonprofit that, according to its nonprofit charter, cannot use its considerable wealth to engage in political activities. So like an organized crime ring, William Penn uses Riverkeeper as the front organization to do its dirty work–investing millions in the Riverkeeper to carry out its (William Penn’s) radical environmental agenda. All at an arm’s length–to protect William Penn’s tax exempt status (hello IRS and PA Attorney General’s office, are you reading this?). It is a thinly-veiled shell game of money changing hands. The William Penn/Riverkeeper shell game is exposed in a recent article in the Washington Examiner…