Statoil Wants Millions in Refunds from Tax Overpayments in WV
Statoil, based in Norway, is a big player in the West Virginia Marcellus Shale. Statoil paid property taxes to Marshall County, WV in 2015 and later found, during an audit/review, that they had overpaid the county by some $300,000. Ouch. So Statoil politely asked for their money back. Marshall County has said “nei.” The WV Tax Department argues that Statoil “acted negligently” and exercised “poor judgment” in not finding the mistake sooner. At least that’s how we read it. So Marshall and WV intend to keep the overpayment. Apparently Marshall isn’t the only county where Statoil says it overpaid on taxes. The company is also seeking refunds in Wetzel, Ohio and Brooke counties as well…
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Last Friday MDN told you that TransCanada completed its $10 billion purchase of Columbia Pipeline Group (see 
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Southwestern Energy, out of the woods or just another dilution story; Cuomo’s lost Marcellus opportunity (and lost jobs); everyone wins in the cracker war; Texas royalty owners sue Chesapeake Energy; EIA says U.S. a net energy exporter by 2017; natgas fills the hole left by coal; petroleum product exports riding high; Shell wants Aramco to pay $2B in bustup fee; Obama’s climate policy is a hot mess; and more!
In March MDN reported that Canadian midstream giant TransCanada wants a bigger piece of the Marcellus/Utica pipeline pie and decided to buy Columbia Pipeline Group for $10 billion (see 
As MDN reported two days ago, the Maryland Dept. of the Environment (MDE) held a public hearing in Baltimore to elicit feedback on changes to the state’s proposed fracking regulations–already the tightest, harshest such regulations in the country (see 
Once again a group of so-called religious leaders, including a serial criminal, were arrested in Boston blocking work on a very short, 5-mile pipeline (West Roxbury Lateral) that will bring cheap, abundant, clean-burning Marcellus Shale gas to local residents in the Boston area. Some 26 were arrested, some of the same nutters were arrested in May (see 
In May 2013 amidst much fanfare, Chevron purchased 61 acres to build a new regional Marcellus Shale headquarters in Moon Township, PA, a suburb of Pittsburgh (see 
Normally polsters, when releasing a high level summary of a poll’s results, also release the “crosstabs”–the details of the poll. But apparently not if the poll is good news for the fracking industry. Rasmussen recently conducted a poll in a series of polls they’ve been conduction (for years) to gage the nation’s attitude about fracking. The poll finds 49% of American’s support fracking, while 34% oppose it. Quick fact: Fracking of conventional or vertical-only wells has been going on for more than 40 years in this country. The high level results were reported by Rasmussen, but no crosstabs which might tell us fracking is supported by a majority of Democrats. That kind of truth-telling is lethal to the politicians running the party. Here’s the (precious little) sum total of what Rasmussen did share about the latest fracking poll…
A few days ago MDN told you about the fruitless efforts by anti-drilling zealots in Youngstown, OH in delivering a petition for a sixth vote on a frack ban measure for the November ballot (see 
A few days ago MDN told you how proud we are of the Marcellus/Utica industry for stepping up the plate and donating money (and time) to assist flood victims in West Virginia (see 
MDN previously chronicled an insidious effort being spearheaded by the odious New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in an attempt to criminalize free speech by accusing Exxon Mobil of “knowing” man-made global warming is “true” but suppressing that knowledge (see 
Are we seeing the beginning of a trend? Yesterday MDN told you that after saying they would only drill a single Marcellus well and were curtailing production in the northeast, Eclipse Resources had turned that around and decided to drill 10-12 new wells, complete 24 wells and open up the spigots to shut-in wells once again (see 
Earlier this week MDN told you that Southwestern Energy, a major Marcellus/Utica driller, has cut deals with its banks and debholders to extend out the due date on loans coming due (see