Deloitte Oil & Gas M&A Report: Lowest Activity in Years
“Everyone” thought that with low prices for oil and gas, and companies not able to turn a profit and heading into bankruptcy, that there would be a flurry of mergers and acquisitions in the oil and gas industry. “Everyone” was wrong. According to the just-released “Oil & Gas Mergers and Acquisitions Report – Mid-year 2016” from powerhouse consulting firm Deloitte (full copy below), M&A activity in the o&g industry is at its lowest point in years. The number of deals in the first half of 2016 was 198, an “extremely low” number compared to what it has been in past years. Where were the highest number of M&As? The number one shale play where deals were done was the Permian Basin–an extremely oil-rich shale layer in western Texas and southeastern New Mexico. The number two shale play where deals were done was, yep, the Marcellus Shale. Here’s the low down…
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According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) International Energy Outlook 2016 and Annual Energy Outlook 2016, natural gas production worldwide is projected to increase from 342 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in 2015 to 554 Bcf/d by 2040. The largest component of this growth is natural gas production from shale resources, which grows from 42 Bcf/d in 2015 to 168 Bcf/d by 2040. Shale gas is expected to account for 30% of world natural gas production by the end of the forecast period. And the largest component of the growth in shale will come from the good ole U.S. of A. Check out the forecast and the graph showing the shale miracle…
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Cabot production could double in 2 years; Marcellus/Utica takeaway capacity heading south; NE rig count goes up, but not in PA; John Hanger takes on StateImpact PA; Chesapeake Energy goes over Niagara Falls without a barrel; and more!
There is a new development in the case of an illegal ban on injection wells passed by Highland Township in Elk County, PA. In 2013 the radical leftist PA-based group Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) convinced ignoramuses in Highland Township to pass a so-called Community Bill of Rights. Seneca Resources, a driller with leases and an active drilling program in Elk, had planned to drill an injection well on their own property to dispose of their own flowback and produced water. The CELDF-inspired ordinance Highland Twp prevented it, and Seneca threatened to sue the town (see
Brooke County, WV makes it four for four in denying Statoil’s request to refund tax overpayments made by the company. Statoil, based in Norway, is a big player in the West Virginia Marcellus Shale. Statoil paid property taxes to Brooke, Marshall, Ohio and Wetzel counties (all in WV) in 2015 and later found, during an audit/review, that they had overpaid those counties. They overpaid Brooke by $1.8 million, Ohio by $2.9 million, Wetzel by $1.6 million and Marshall by $342,000. We previously reported on Marshall’s refusal to refund the money (see
While the number of permits issued to drill new wells in Ohio and Pennsylvania was down in July 2016 compared with July 2015, permit activity has picked up from earlier in the year. Finally. The question is, where are the new permits being issued? You have to have a permit before you have drilling. Permits are the best indicator of where drilling (and economic) activity is about to pick up. Below is a rundown of which counties are likely to soon see drilling–and which drillers will be doing the drilling…
It has been a loooooong road to adopting new drilling regulations in Pennsylvania–for both conventional and unconventional (shale) oil and gas drilling. The process is rumored to have begun during the Jurassic Period, when dinosaurs were still dying to produce current oil and natural gas supplies, picking up steam following the 2012 Act 13 legislation that called for an update to drilling regs (under then Gov. Tom Corbett). More recently, with the prospect of starting the process over again for both shale and conventional regs, Gov. Tom Wolf cut a deal to accept “half a loaf”–accept new regs for the shale industry and start over again with conventional drilling regs (see
Indisputable fact #1: With the increased use of natural gas to generate electricity, the air is getting cleaner. That has been proven by both private and government studies. Indisputable fact #2: With the increased use of natural gas to generate electricity, less carbon dioxide is emitted (for those who believe in the fairy tale of man-made global warming). If you’re a warmer, you ought to love natgas use in electric plants for those two reasons alone. However, so twisted is the thinking of radical anti-fossil fuelers, they can’t bring themselves to endorse natural gas because it’s an evil, hated, awful fossil fuel. And so otherwise smart people become idiots–like those who belong to Pennsylvanians Against Fracking (PAF). The PAF gang is harassing the state Dept. of Environment Protection because the DEP has approved either the conversion of coal to natgas, or the building of new natgas power plants some 42 times since January 2014. The PAF gang are smart enough to realize more natgas-fired power plants leads to more drilling (and fracking) and their irrational philosophy dictates they must oppose it…
We sometimes run Top 10 lists for the Marcellus/Utica, or even the U.S., but what about a Top 10 list of natural gas producers in the entire world? We spotted an article on the Forbes magazine website that lists the Top 10 natgas producers for the entire world. By our count, eight of the ten have major or minor operations in the Marcellus/Utica. Cool! Here’s the list…
Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed “fast Eddie” Rendell made an off-the-cuff remark at a bull session at the Democrat National Convention last month that far-left media types tried to twist. He said, “I made a mistake in the rush to get the economic part of fracking delivered to Pennsylvania. We didn’t regulate well construction and…frack water as well as we should.” So-called reporters at propaganda outlets like StateImpact Pennsylvania immediately jumped on that and declared Rendell admitted to making a mistake, and getting it wrong, with fracking in the Keystone State (see 
Events related to drilling in the Marcellus and Utica Shale, primarily pro-drilling.
The one great, huge, towering problem that anti-drillers have is that there is no scientific evidence that supports their wild claims that fracking contaminates water–which is their favorite lie to spread. When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) arrived at the same conclusion–that fracking doesn’t pollute water–after four years of studying it, that really took the wind out of the sails of rabid fossil fuel haters (see