Mystery Buyer to Pay WPX Energy $200M for NE Marcellus Assets
WPX Energy announced yesterday that they’ve sold more of (the rest of?) their northeast Marcellus Shale assets. This time it’s not leases and wells, but instead “various long-term natural gas purchase and sales agreements, along with 135 million Btu per day of firm transportation capacity on Transco’s Northeast Supply Link project.” That is, WPX was on the hook to either buy or sell natural gas along pipelines at certain locations in the northeast region, and those deals to buy and sell gas were sold, along with WPX’s contract to flow up to 135 million Btus (which equates to just 135 thousand cubic feet, or 135 Mcf) of natural gas on Transco’s Northeast Supply Link pipeline system. The combined sale was to an unnamed buyer for approximately $200 million. MDN has a guess about who the mystery buyer is…
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We’re passing along a bit of gossip–we call it gossip because we haven’t (yet) been able to verify it, but we believe it to be true. A long-time MDN reader wrote to tell us that he services most of the rigs operating in the Appalachian basin (Marcellus/Utica), and that Southwestern either has or is about to idle two rigs owned and operated by Precision Drilling in northeast PA: Rigs #538 and #539 in Bradford and Susquehanna counties. According to our source, the Bradford County rig was idled last week and the Susquehanna County rig will be idled this week. We don’t know if Southwestern has any remaining active rigs in northeastern PA owned by other companies.
This is not an easy story to write. It’s about employment in the Marcellus Shale industry–and about age discrimination. Until late last year, by all accounts the Marcellus Shale industry was, from a jobs perspective, going great guns. Yes, sometimes it was/is necessary to import workers from other states to handle specialized jobs. But increasingly the jobs have been going to local workers and not out-of-staters. Yesterday we received a heartfelt letter (below) from an MDN subscriber. This gentleman is a mechanical engineer with degrees from Penn State and Lafayette College. He has loads of experience in a variety of areas–engineering, contracting, even running a small business. He wants to get involved with the greatest industry on the planet–the Marcellus Shale energy industry. He can paper every room in his house with the number of resumes and job applications he’s filled out. He’s applied for everything from technician to field hand to roustabout (he’s physically fit). In the last five years that he’s been trying, he hasn’t been called for a single interview. Not one. He’s now 52 years old. We don’t like calling attention to stories like this one, but MDN doesn’t shy away from sharing the “bad news” about our beloved industry along with the overwhelming good news…
Seems like it was ages ago now that we told you (and keep telling you) about a rural school district in northeastern Pennsylvania–the Elk Lake School District–that drilled two Marcellus Shale wells on the school campus (see