EQT 3Q16: Company will Soon be Primarily a Utica Driller
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…
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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…
Each month MDN tracks how many rigs oilfield services company Patterson-UTI Energy reports operating–as a proxy for when/if the drop in rig counts for the Marcellus/Utica will turn around. Patterson operates a number of rigs in the northeast, as well as other areas of the continental United States (and Canada). Patterson reported losing $84 million during the second quarter of 2016, responding that the company is positioned for a recovery (see 
The 16,000-member Pennsylvania Medical Society is controlled by a small and dedicated group of radical leftists. They’re also shockingly stupid, for doctors and medical people (you might want to seek medical care in another state). The PA Medical Society’s 300-member House of Delegates voted unanimously to pass a resolution calling for a total ban on fracking in the Keystone State. Stop it–all of it–right now. That’s what they said. Even though there is no evidence that fracking harms human health. That is, independent studies done all say the same thing: fracking is safe. However, biased bought-and-paid-for studies say fracking will kill ‘ya. We find it astonishing that there was not one single delegate who didn’t vote for the resolution–which proves our point that radical, lock-step lefties control the society…
One of the largest banks in the world (#11) is the German-based Deutsche Bank. They have major branches in dozens of countries, including the U.S. The Equity Research – North America operation of Deutsche Bank attended the Platts 9th Annual Appalachian Oil & Gas Conference in Pittsburgh earlier this week. The DB analyst who attended wrote up notes and shared them. We found the writeup interesting and thought you would too…
It will be fun watching far left Democrat politicians in New England point fingers at each other this winter when electricity and natural gas prices go through the roof. It won’t be fun watching the residents of New England pay 4-10 times what people in other parts of the country pay for their electricity and natural gas–but they’re the ones who elected the dolts that “lead” them. So we don’t have too much sympathy. An agreement by the New England states to seek new natural gas pipeline infrastructure and LNG resources has fallen apart because of squabbling among the states. In large part because of political pressure being applied by lunatic global warming scaremongers. Connecticut is the latest state to throw in the towel, canceling an RFP (request for proposal) that would bring cheap, abundant, clean-burning natural gas from places like the Marcellus, just a few hundred miles away, to the state. What a shame. The only thing to do now is sit back and watch the fun begin. We’ll be here to chronicle the sad decline of (and mass exodus from) New England…
Get this. More than 100 so-called protesters (i.e. criminals) had illegally set up camp on PRIVATE PROPERTY–against the landowner’s wishes–in an effort to stop work on the Dakota Access Pipeline project. A large group of police officers, SWAT teams, etc. had to move in to remove the lawbreakers. So what does the group of protesters who claim to worship Mother Earth and are there to protect Mom Earth from being raped by a pipeline do? They set fire to a pile of used tires–emitting the worst kind of fumes and emissions into the air, polluting everything around. They also torched equipment used to lay the pipeline. One of the “protesters” produced a .38-caliber pistol and fired three times at police officers. Yeah, that’s the peace-loving, earth-protecting THUGS in North Dakota–most of whom arrived from out-of-state and are paid to be there. Hired thugs engaging in thuggery. Why mention this story on MDN? Because as we previously wrote, one of the leaders of these thugs has promised to bring the fight to the Marcellus/Utica next…
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Marcellus operators save money with online water management; ExxonMobil ordered to turn over 30 year-old documents by corrupt NY Supreme Court; battle over PA drilling rules continues; PA mobilizes to mine cracker benefits; FERC authorizes Elba LNG work commencement; Nevada sitting on biggest undiscovered oilfield?; shale honeymoon over for East Coast refineries; US drilling tech heading overseas; and more!
Yesterday Murray Energy, which operates coal mines in Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Utah, and West Virginia, announced it had sold the leases for 5,900 of the acres it owns in Belmont and Monroe counties (in eastern Ohio) to an unidentified shale driller for $63.6 million. That works out to be ~$10,800 per acre. According to Murray officials, the sale will allow the company to focus on its core activity–coal mining. The money will also help the company stay out of bankruptcy court. The sale, which is slated to close “in the coming weeks” doesn’t ID the buyer. But we have a guess as to who bought…
Two weeks ago the Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) filed a court challenge to the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) onerous new Marcellus drilling regulations (see 
Antero Resources, one of the biggest drillers in the Marcellus, released their second quarter 2016 update in August which showed natgas production was up 19% over 2Q15 (see 
MDN has extensively covered the story of what will become the largest natural gas-fired electric generating plant in Pennsylvania, being built by Invenergy in Jessup Township in Lackawanna County (see 
In June 2014 Dominion filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to construct and operate new compression facilities at existing compressor stations in Marshall County, WV and Monroe County, OH, and certain other facilities, collectively called the Clarington Project (see 
Yesterday MDN reported that EQT is buying another 60,000 Marcellus/Utica acres (along with buying out Trans Energy) in transactions totally $683 million (see