Corp Raider Continues to Trash Talk EQT/Rice Merger, Vote Set Nov 9
The disgusting corporate raiders at Jana Partners are fighting to the bitter end in their attempt to stop the merger/takeover of Rice Energy by EQT. In June EQT and Rice Energy announced that EQT will buy out and merge in Rice Energy, to create (in EQT) the largest natural gas-producing company in the United States (see EQT Buys Rice Energy in $8.2B Deal, Becomes #1 Gas Producer in US). A few weeks later, so-called “activist investor” (i.e. corporate raider) Jana Partners, in league with the Cohen family (Atlas Energy) started a proxy fight to block EQT’s takover/merger with Rice (see Proxy Fight: Jana Partners, Atlas Tries to Stop EQT/Rice Deal). Jana is the same company that recently helped Amazon in its hostile takeover of grocery company Whole Foods. Unfortunately (for Jana), their strategy isn’t working this time around. Over the past few weeks Jana has sent a couple of nasty letters to EQT’s board, making some rather wild claims. The tone of Jana’s communication is becoming more shrill as time goes on, as desperation sets in and a vote by EQT shareholders on the deal draws near (Nov. 9). The problem is the financial press picks up on these wild claims and repeats them, so yesterday EQT felt it necessary to (once again) respond and set the record straight–to debunk the lies Jana is spreading about the deal and about EQT’s past performance…
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Although the anti-fossil fuel group Lancaster Against Pipelines claims “over 1,000 people” have pledged to protest the pipeline in the county, only 26 (or 23, depending on the news source) showed up to get themselves arrested for attempting to stop the pipeline. We’ve previously written about the hypocritical Catholic nuns who operate a retirement home that uses fracked natural gas to heat it, yet oppose a pipeline to flow the same fracked gas under their property. The nuns, called Adorers of the Blood of Christ, have tried several strategies to derail the Williams Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline project. One of stunts they pulled, in league with the radicals from Lancaster Against Pipelines, is to stick a few wooden park benches in the middle of a corn field that they own (leased to a local farmer), and call it a “chapel”–which is why MDN dubbed them Sisters of the Corn. The sisters sued to stop the pipeline on religious grounds, claiming it violates a core religious belief in preserving Mom Earth. A judge saw through that sham and threw out the case (see 
MDN’s favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), issued our favorite monthly report, the Drilling Productivity Report (DPR), yesterday. The DPR is the EIA’s best guess, based on expert data crunchers, as to how much each of the U.S.’s seven major shale plays will produce for both oil and natural gas in the coming month. Last month the EIA predicted combined natural gas production across all of the major plays they track would hit 59.7 billion cubic feet per day (see 
RINOsaur /ri-no-sor/ (noun) – 1. a very old (fossil-worthy) Republican-In-Name-Only, someone who, if he were truly honest, would have registered as a Democrat decades ago. 2. so-called moderate Republican whom voters should have been put out to pasture decades ago. 3. Gene DiGirolamo. Pennsylvania State Rep. Gene DiGirolamo, a Republican-in-Name-Only (RINO) from the Philadelphia area, has been trying to punish the Marcellus industry in the state since 2011 when he first introduced legislation to impose a Marcellus-killing severance tax. And pretty much every year since then he has re-introduced a severance tax bill. Sometimes it’s for 3.2%. Other times 4.9% (
We’d call this a case of Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) and Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) getting taken to the (pipe) cleaners. The anti-fossil fuel (and far-left) Virginia Outdoors Foundation (VOF) warned both Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley, years ago, that land the non-profit previously tied up with non-development easements is off limits for their respective pipeline projects. So-called “open space” organizations like VOF get private landowners to sell them easements to their properties–the right to disallow any kind of development on the land, no matter who buys it in the future. But sometimes “no development” doesn’t actually mean “no development”–it’s just a bargaining position. The VOF has just cut a deal to allow ACP and MVP to cross a cumulative 53 acres of land, land with no-development easements, in exchange for adding 1,130 acres in other places to the their no-development easement stash. Oh, and $4,075,000 in cash for VOF’s coffers will be chipped in too. A true shake-down by shake-down artists, all to stick a couple of pipelines in the ground for a few hundred feet where nothing will get built over top of them anyway…
Yesterday MDN told you about an effort under way in Pennsylvania to reign in the ever-expanding power of executive agencies in Pennsylvania, like the Dept. of Environmental Protection, by passing a law that requires the PA legislature to approve “economically significant” final regulations (see 
Canadian company Enbridge owns the mighty Texas Eastern Transmission Company (Tetco) pipeline system in the U.S. Last Wednesday, as workers were installing test equipment along the line in Noble County, OH, the workers noticed soil around the pipeline moving around. Not a good situation. So they shut off the flow of gas through that section of the pipeline, south of the Berne compressor station in Noble County. That portion of the pipeline went from flowing 1.6 to 2.3 billion cubic feet of gas per day (depending on the news source), down to flowing zero. The situation was investigated and the pipeline returned to service on Sunday, Oct 15th. In the meantime, from the 11th to the 15th, Tetco declared the situation “force majeure”–meaning “due to circumstances beyond our control we have to shut it off.” We assume force majeure was declared because shippers who wanted to move gas through the pipeline, and buyers on the other end, were screwed for a few days. Shippers lost money from gas they could have sold and buyers had to scramble to try and find other sources to meet demand. Economic losses for both. We’re guessing declaring force majeure lets Tetco off the hook legally for any potential monetary damages its customers experienced during the outage…
For some time we’ve had our eye on a project to store ethane in underground caverns in Ohio. Mountaineer NGL Storage wants to build a new underground NGL storage facility in Monroe County, Ohio, near Clarington, along the Ohio River (see 
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: OH cracker main topic at upcoming Wheeling/WVU conference; Washington & Jefferson College to hold shale gas planning discussion; coal takes back seat to natgas in Ohio; WV regulatory environment differs from PA; Cabot raises $200K for college with sporting clay tournament; OOGEEP & Gov. Kasich tout energy awareness; Cheniere’s gamble on LNG; boom in LNG shaking up the energy world; EPA moves to end practice of “sue and settle”; and more!
Great news delivered late Friday afternoon: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued final, full approvals for both the Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley pipeline projects. Atlantic Coast is a $5 billion, 594-mile natural gas pipeline that will stretch from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina. Mountain Valley is a $3.5 billion, 303-mile natural gas pipeline that will run from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA. Both projects still face an uphill battle before they get built. The North Carolina Dept. of Environmental Quality (DEQ) issued a rejection letter for Atlantic Coast last week (see 
The Andrew Cuomo-corrupted New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) on Friday filed an appeal/challenge with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) contesting FERC’s recent ruling that essentially emasculates the DEC regarding their rejection of a tiny pipeline project in Orange County, NY. On Aug. 30, the DEC issued a letter to FERC and Millennium Pipeline denying Millennium’s request for a water permit to build a 7.8 mile pipeline spur from the main Millennium Pipeline to a natural gas power plant under construction in Orange County (see 
The Andrew Cuomo-corrupted New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) took more than two years to evaluate and eventually reject the Constitution Pipeline–a $683 million, 124-mile pipeline from Susquehanna County, PA to Schoharie County, NY to move Marcellus gas (see 
MDN friend Tom Shepstone (Natural Gas Now) has long pointed out that the William Penn Foundation funds a variety of front groups to push an anti-fossil fuel agenda. William Penn funds groups like the Sierra Club, THE Delaware Riverkeeper, and the New Jersey Conservation Foundation. William Penn also funds “news” outlets, including StateImpact Pennsylvania and NJ Spotlight. So this is how it happens: Riverkeeper, the Sierra Club and others issue wild claims about a project like the PennEast Pipeline, and then StateImpact and NJ Spotlight report it like it’s news. Incestuous. At the center of it all is the William Penn Foundation. MDN friend Kevin Moody does a great job of exposing this web of deceit targeting PennEast Pipeline in an article published on The Daily Signal…
Cabot Oil & Gas has long been one of our favorite Marcellus drillers. We are friends with several members of the Cabot team. We are impressed with their many acts of philanthropy in northeastern Pennsylvania–donating millions of dollars to worthy causes in the local community where they drill. As we’ve pointed out many times, Cabot somehow spins gold out of hay in Susquehanna County–producing something like 2.5% of all the natural gas that’s produced in the U.S. from a single county. They have some of the best rocks in the shale business. Cabot’s assets have not gone unnoticed on Wall Street, where investors and analysts call the company “a unicorn.” While the term unicorn as applied to a company can have several meanings, as applied to Cabot the meaning is clear: the company is rare, and desirable. In an Investor’s Business Daily article, several analysts gush about Cabot in light of the beginning of construction of the Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline project. Cabot will be the main shipper on the new pipeline. Analysts are predicting next year, in 2018, Cabot’s production will increase 23% from this year. And in 2019, one analyst says Cabot production will be up a whopping 47%! You begin to see why Cabot has a reputation as a unicorn on Wall Street…