Jury Finds PA AG Kathleen Kane Guilty of Committing Felonies
Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane is no longer just felony-indicted. She’s now felony-convicted. Yesterday a jury of six women and six men spent 4 1/2 hours in deliberation following Kane’s trial for committing perjury, among other crimes, and they found her guilty of all nine counts against her. We’ve chronicled this long, sordid affair from the beginning. Kane is an enemy of the drilling industry–she has been from the beginning when she filed criminal charges against XTO Energy for an accidental spill that happened years before she took office. That case was settled just a few weeks ago (see Shakedown Complete: XTO Pays PA AG $400K to Make Case Go Away). Kane’s crimes and subsequent trial have nothing to do with the Marcellus industry. Although she is the top law enforcement officer in the state, Kane is now a convicted criminal facing up to 28 years in jail for her crimes. Yet she still has not resigned her office. If Kane does not resign within the next day or two, look for the PA legislature move swiftly to impeach, convict and forcibly remove her from office…
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All the way back in February MDN brought you exclusive news that Shell had begun approaching landowners in Beaver County to get them to sign easements for two ethane pipelines to feed the mighty cracker plant they plan to build in the county (see 
Yesterday Chesapeake Energy, the secon largest natural gas producer in the United States (and the largest Marcellus producer, by far) issued three press releases. The first release said the company is working to obtain a five-year bank loan for a staggering $1 billion. The second two releases outlined what they will do with that money: pay off older IOUs. We also spotted commentary on the company’s $1B plan. One analyst predicts Chesapeake is heading for a pre-packaged bankruptcy, similar to what other o&g companies have done, and this massive loan/debt repayment is proof. Another analyst says Chessy CEO Doug Lawler is brilliant and that this move will strengthen Chessy’s stock in the long-term and make the company more solvent. Which one is right? They both can’t be right…
Yesterday MDN’s favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), issued our favorite monthly report–the Drilling Productivity Report (DPR). The DPR is the EIA’s best guess, based on expert data crunchers, as to how much each of the U.S.’s seven major shale plays will produce for both oil and natural gas in the coming month. The EIA projects natural gas production cumulatively across all shale plays will once again fall in September–the seventh consecutive month it will have fallen. However, as was the case in last month’s report, the Utica stands alone and against the trend by showing an increase in production month over month. Last month the EIA predicted the Utica would increase production by 5 million cubic feet per day, or MMcf/d (see 
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) has certain minimum standards if a company wants to continue trading stocks on the exchange: The company’s stock price must be trading for at least $1 per share, and the company’s market capitalization must be at least $50 million. Market cap is pretty easy to calculate: it’s the number of outstanding shares times the per-share price. If you have 50 million shares of stock and the price is trading for $1/share, you’re there. You meet the NYSE’s requirements. Various companies with operations in the Marcellus/Utica have fallen short and have been warned by the NYSE that unless they get their act together, they would be de-listed. Some turned it around (see 
The big news in the midstream world over the past year was the attempted merger/takeover of Williams by Energy Transfer Equity. That deal finally fell apart in June (see 
“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…
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 
In July MDN reported that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has approved Eastern Shore Natural Gas’ (ESNG) System Reliability Project (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…