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Weekly Shale Drilling Permits for PA, OH, WV: May 10-16
All three M-U states received permits to drill new shale wells last week. Pennsylvania received a sizable 14 new permits (after receiving 18 permits the previous week). The majority of those permits were for wells on three pads in northeastern PA. Ohio received 3 new permits last week all in one county (Greene) for one driller (Eclipse, now owned by Southwestern Energy) on one well pad. And West Virginia received a sizable 13 new permits with 9 of them split between two well pads for different drillers (Northeast Natural Energy and Tug Hill).
Read More “Weekly Shale Drilling Permits for PA, OH, WV: May 10-16”
The issue of expired leases has once again reared its head for EQT–this time in West Virginia. In 2006 a group of WV landowners/rights owners sued Equitable Production Company (now EQT) claiming, among other things, “damages for improper deductions of post-production expenses from their royalty payments and damages for breach of lease agreements, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, violation of the West Virginia Consumer Credit and Protection Act…violation of the flat rate royalty statute… and punitive damages, all related to the improper payment of royalties.” That case was settled in 2010. However, a subgroup within the larger class action group has a new/different claim: that EQT let leases lapse and then reentered and drilled on property out-of-lease. It’s called trespass.
EQT announced yesterday it has closed on a deal to sell “certain non-strategic assets” to Diversified Gas & Oil (DGO) for $125 million, plus another potential $20 million later on. MDN first told you about this deal on May 13 (see 
The last time MDN reported on Tug Hill Operating was more than two years ago, a story about Tug Hill’s XcL Midstream subsidiary working to build a new gathering pipeline system in West Virginia to flow gas that would come from Tug Hill’s THQ Appalachia drilling subsidiary (see 
Saudi Arabia is sniffing around the Marcellus Shale. Bloomberg reports that super secret talks are happening between Saudi Aramco (largest oil company in the world, owned by the Saudi government) and Equinor, which until recently was called Statoil. Equinor is majority-owned by the government of Norway. The Saudis are considering “buying a stake” in or possibly a joint venture with Equinor. It seems Norway is hesitant to hop into bed with the Saudis. We don’t blame them.
In January the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) gave permission to TransCanada’s Columbia Pipeline group to start up a portion of the Mountaineer XPress Pipeline in West Virginia (see 
Here’s an interesting twist on the theme of drillers shorting leaseholders out of royalty money. Usually such cases involve drillers claiming post-production deductions from landowner royalty checks. This time the landowner/rightsholder is Columbia Gas Transmission (pipeline company owned by midstream giant TransCanada), and the claim is that Southwestern Energy (driller) is not paying royalties for gas produced but not actually sold.
EQT Midstream, which is about to be renamed to Equitrans Midstream Corp. in a few weeks, recently issued its third quarter 2018 update (same day that EQT the driller issued its update). As you know, the two are about to split and become two independent companies. As part of the EQT Midstream update, the new midstream company leaders spoke about Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), a 303-mile pipeline from West Virginia into southern Virginia. MVP has experienced a lot of setbacks, most of them from a campaign of lawsuits filed by Big Green organizations (like the odious Sierra Club). A new pipeline project related to MVP was mentioned prominently in this week’s quarterly update. The pipeline is called Hammerhead.
Although EQT Midstream’s 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project has experienced a number of legal and regulatory setbacks and is currently blocked from constructing pipeline across/under/near any river, stream, or wetland in all of West Virginia and all of Virginia (some 1,100 different locations), believe it or not there are still many places where MVP can and is still installing pipeline (see 
We thought that all of Mountain Valley Pipeline’s (MVP) permits issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for stream and wetland crossings had been pulled in both West Virginia and Virginia, but alas, no. One of the regions where permits issued by the Army Corps (called NWP 12 permits), in the northern panhandle of WV, is issued by a different Army Corps district office (in Pittsburgh). That office has now revoked MVP’s permits in Wetzel and Harrison counties–another 59 stream and 62 wetland crossings. Which now makes it complete: MVP cannot engage in any construction across/under/near any river, stream, or wetland in *all* of WV and *all* of VA. That is, until they get the NWP 12 permit reworked and reissued.