Breaking: Who Needs Halliburton? Baker Hughes Merging with GE O&G
As this post is being written and published, the world’s third largest oilfield services company, Baker Hughes, is holding an investor webcast to announce it has struck a deal to combine/merge with/sell itself to GE’s oil and gas business. The deal, according to the Wall Street Journal, will result in a new company that will be 65.5% owned by GE and 37.5% owned by Baker Hughes shareholders. The deal, IF it gets approved by the Dept. of Justice, will create a company with $32 billion in revenues. Make no mistake, aside from all of the “partnership” talk, this is GE buying out Baker Hughes. The CEO of the new company will be Lorenzo Simonelli, chief executive of GE Oil & Gas. The board of directors for the new company will have 5 members appointed by GE and 4 members appointed by Baker Hughes. The deal, if it happens, would catapult the new Baker Hughes (or whatever it will be called) past Halliburton to become the world’s second largest oilfield services company. Get this: The deal may even catapult the new company to become the world’s number one oilfield services company–eclipsing Schlumberger! The question now is, will the Dept. of Justice approve the deal? Earlier this year the Obama DOJ killed the proposed Baker Hughes merger with Halliburton (see Obama DOJ Kills Halliburton/Baker Hughes Merger, Deal “Terminated”). We suppose it depends on who wins the White House next week. Look for Hillary to approve the deal. She’s in bed (figuratively) with GE chief executive Jeff Immelt. As Secretary of State, Clinton lobbied Alergia for a GE power plant contract. After Alegeria gave GE the $1.9 BILLION contract, Jeff Immelt gave a $1 million “donation” to the Clinton Foundation (see GE’s Jeffrey Immelt roped into Clinton cash scandal). That’s how it works in the corrupt world of Clinton Inc. We’re not sure what Trump would do about the proposed deal. Here’s the lowdown on GE’s proposed buyout of Baker Hughes…
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One MDN’s favorite Marcellus drillers, Cabot Oil & Gas, released their third quarter 2016 update on Friday. Production once again set a new record with Cabot producing 144.4 billion cubic feet (Bcf) of natural gas in 3Q16 (up from 133 in 3Q15). The number of wells drilled decreased from 27 new wells drilled in 3Q15 to 11 new wells drilled in 3Q16. However, Cabot has/had plenty of drilled but uncompleted wells (DUCs). In 3Q15 Cabot completed 21 wells and in 3Q16 they completed 23 wells. Once again the company treaded water financial, losing $10 million in 3Q16 (down from losing $15.5M in 3Q15). Frankly, $10M is chump change in the o&g business. The biggest news (for us) in the Cabot update from Friday is their strategy announcement. It can be summed up in one slide from their analyst presentation (see it below) which is titled: INFRASTRUCTURE UPDATE: 2018 IS AN INFLECTION YEAR FOR CABOT. On that slide is a list of six infrastructure projects that are critical to the future of Cabot–all of them expected to go online in 2018. Yes, the Constitution Pipeline is one of the six. Can you guess the others?…
On Friday, ahead of releasing its third quarter update, Williams issued a press release to confirm what we already know: Atlantic Sunrise will be delayed. Atlantic Sunrise is a $3 billion, 198-mile pipeline project running through 10 Pennsylvania counties to connect Marcellus Shale natural gas from PA with the Williams’ Transco pipeline in southern Lancaster County. Two weeks ago the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission announced a delay in the environmental review of the project (see 
In April of this year, Mountaineer NGL Storage announced an open season for a new underground NGL storage facility in Monroe County, Ohio, near Clarington, along the Ohio River (see 
Two weeks ago MDN wrote a post outlining an initiative to begin regulating small, low-pressure gathering pipelines–something not now done (see 
You may recall that for some time we’ve been following the back and forth between Range Resources and their (former) wastewater impoundments in Washington County, PA. The PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) fined Range a whopping $4.15 million for violations in September 2014 (see 
This is not an electioneering site. We are not on the payroll of any candidate. We have tried to avoid most comments on the upcoming presidential election. You obviously know where our political sympathies lie, if you’ve read this site for any length of time. Below we bring you someone else’s words outlining, in succinct form, the energy positions and proposed policies of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. When you read it, objectively, there is only one candidate who supports the oil and gas industry and is worthy of your vote next Tuesday, November 8th…
Events related to drilling in the Marcellus and Utica Shale, primarily pro-drilling.
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: DTE says NEXUS on schedule for 4Q17; rig counts stable in northeast; unbelievably biased green-sponsored push-poll; PA Sen Don White speaks frankly about energy & Clinton; slowdown in FERC approval for Texas LNG plants; Rockefeller family tied to corrupt Clinton Foundation; beginning of the end in Europe’s natgas war with Russia; and more!
MDN reported on Monday of this week that we are down to the wire with passing Pennsylvania House Bill (HB) 1391, a bill that would guarantee a 12.5% minimum royalty payment for PA landowners (see 
In May 2014 Panda Power Funds broke ground on building an 829-megawatt Marcellus gas-fired electric generating plant in Asylum Township, Bradford County, PA (see 
EQT issued its third quarter 2016 update yesterday. The company reports losing money on its drilling operations ($22 million), but making money on midstream operations ($133 million), so they ended the quarter in the black. Highlights include production zooming up 26% higher over the same period last year. EQT drilled 24 wells in 3Q16, which breaks down as 21 Marcellus wells, 2 Upper Devonian wells and 1 Utica well. However, the biggest news coming from yesterday’s update came from the analyst phone call when EQT president Steve Schlotterbeck said, “We continue to make solid progress on both the cost and recovery efforts and we’re encouraged that the Deep Utica can compete with or surpass our core Marcellus economics in the near future.” That is, although they just got done drilling a bunch of Marcellus wells, it is the Utica that has turned EQT’s head in a major way. Why? Schlotterbeck also said he thinks Utica drilling will end up costing the company half as much as Marcellus drilling (due to higher production in Utica wells). The company sees itself as primarily a Utica driller in the not-too-distant future. Here’s the update, along with a select portion of yesterday’s analyst phone call…
MPLX, Marathon Petroleum Corp.’s fuels processing, transportation and logistics subsidiary, issued its third quarter 2016 update yesterday. MPLX reported that profits more than tripled, to $141 million, in 3Q16. MPLX is the owner of MarkWest Energy after buying them out late last year. One of the keys to MPLX’s increase in profits? Yep–the Marcellus/Utica. On an analyst phone call yesterday, MPLX’s president Don Templin said: “While other basins are in decline the Marcellus and Utica rich gas volumes continue to grow. For 2016 we continue to expect processed volumes to increase by approximately 15% year-over-year and gathered volumes to increase by approximately 20%. And in 2017, we expect an additional 10% to 15% increase in processed volumes compared to 2016.” Here’s the MPLX 3Q16 update…