French Supermajor Total Buys 23% Stake in Tellurian LNG
Total, a French multinational integrated oil and gas company and one of the six “Supermajor” oil companies in the world, has just purchased a 23% stake in Tellurian Investments for $207 million. Tellurian is building the Driftwood LNG export facility in southern Louisiana (see Fired Cheniere Energy CEO Charif Souki’s Revenge: Driftwood LNG). Tellurian CEO Charif Souki was fired one year ago this month by Carl Icahan from Cheniere Energy, the LNG exporting company he co-founded (see Evil Corporate Raider Carl Icahn Claims Another CEO Scalp). We used to feel bad for Souki, but no more–not since he made an ass of himself by saying in a CNBC interview he would reconsider his American citizenship if Donald Trump won the presidency (see Will Charif Souki Renounce His American Citizenship?). We’re still waiting for Souki to go back to his native Egypt–or perhaps now, to France. That would be fitting. At any rate, here’s the details on Total investing in Souki’s Tellurian investments, which is a play to get in on the hot LNG export action in the U.S….
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The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: OH Utica Shale counties to watch in 2017; rig count keeps climbing in PA; Cheniere’s Corpus Christi project close to 50% done; Gulf oil rigs stagnate as shale rigs increase; a December to remember for natgas; Halliburton 2016 in review; Aramco snapping up refineries may end under Trump; and more!
In June 2015, a full year ahead of Shell’s final investment decision (FID) to build a multi-billion dollar ethane cracker plant complex in Beaver County, PA, the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection issued the project air quality permits–which was a “critical” requirement for Shell before making their decision (see 
Last Wednesday MDN (via a story from NGI) brought you the good news that the Rockies Express Pipeline (REX) had begun to flow an extra 200 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of natural gas from East to West along the pipeline–moving more Utica and Marcellus gas from Ohio to places like the Chicago area (see 
On Oct. 8, after five years in the making, Pennsylvania adopted new shale drilling regulations (see 
Last week MDN told you about Gulfport Energy’s deal to buy 85,000 acres of leases with 48 horizontal wells in Oklahoma’s SCOOP shale play in a $1.85 billion deal (see 
In November 2015, MDN told you about Pilgrim Pipeline Holdings, developing an East Coast pipeline to carry refined petroleum products such as gasoline, diesel, heating oil, and jet and aviation fuel northbound from Linden, New Jersey to Albany, New York (178 miles). In addition, a second Pilgrim pipeline will carry crude oil from Albany south to NJ and other locations. Two pipelines, side by side, liquids flowing through them in different directions (see 
A bunch of wacko New England liberals get together at a local high school to bad mouth the proposed Spectra Energy Access Northeast Pipeline project. That describes just about any town or hamlet in Massachusetts just about any night of the week. These New England libs, who are intolerant of the very fossil fuels that allow them to exist, are actually kind of funny (and sad) when you listen to them. We read yet another such story, about a group of antis in Grafton, MA, and thought you might enjoy our reading our appended comments to the story. Hey, you’ve got to have fun with this stuff–or you’d just get depressed at how obtuse some people can be…
We’ve written plenty about President Obama’s so-called Clean Power Plan (CPP), introduced last summer, a plan to force electric generators to convert to using more “renewable” sources of energy–and less fossil fuels (see 
The London School of Economics recently released a research study that prominently features the Marcellus/Utica. In “On the Comparative Advantage of U.S. Manufacturing: Evidence from the Shale Gas Revolution” (full copy below), the authors find America’s shale revolution is revitalizing American manufacturing. If we could vastly simplify the research in just a few words, it is this: While we have enough shale gas to export plenty of it, exporting it is not as economic as exporting oil due to the elaborate processes to liquefy and regassify natural gas–therefore a lot of the gas stays right here at home, making the U.S. one of (if not the) cheapest places on the planet to establish manufacturing plants, especially for manufacturers that use natural gas and NGLs (natural gas liquids). Therefore, manufacturing, especially in the petrochemical sector, is ramping back up in the U.S. The authors cite a study that says for every two jobs created by the fracking industry, another one job is created in the manufacturing sector. The paper also concludes that the shale revolution saved Obama’s bacon by creating hundreds of thousands of jobs. Without shale drilling we would not have recovered as quickly as we did from the economic near-collapse of 2007/2008. Here’s a summary of the research, followed by a full copy of the published paper…
Two weeks ago MDN editor Jim Willis attended the “Platts Global Energy Outlook Forum 2016” held in New York City (see 
Events related to drilling in the Marcellus and Utica Shale, primarily pro-drilling.
Last week MDN editor Jim Willis attended the “Platts Global Energy Outlook Forum 2016,” held at the beautiful Cipriani, located across the street from the iconic bull that sits on Wall Street. As in previous years, this year’s event featured a number of big names in the oil and gas industry. Most notable was the opening keynote address and Q&A with Harold Hamm, CEO of oil driller Continental Resources (and an adviser to Donald Trump). The luncheon featured the former Secretary General of OPEC. As you can surmise, this year’s event, unlike previous years, was mostly about oil. The recent OPEC agreement to cut production among member states by 1.2 million barrels per day, and a follow-on agreement by non-OPEC members (like Russia) to cut another 600,000 barrels per day, was the topic du jour for speakers and audience members alike. Below are MDN’s notes from Harold Hamm’s address and Q&A session…