Antero Resources 2Q15: Production Up 67%, Continues to Bleed $$
Antero Resources, one of the biggest drillers in the Marcellus/Utica and a company totally focused on northeast shale drilling filed its second quarter financial update yesterday. On the positive side, Antero’s natural gas production rose 67% year over year to 1.5 billion cubic feet per day equivalent (Bcfe/d) in 2Q15. Looking forward, Antero says they expect when you compare all of 2015 production with all of 2016 production you will see an increase of 25-30% for 2016. The company continues to drive down costs–9% lower in 2Q15 from a year ago. On the negative side, Antero continues to bleed (a lot of) money. In 2Q14, Antero had a net loss of $42 million. In 2Q15 that expanded to a net loss of $145 million–a 245% increase in the wrong direction, down. Antero is a company with great assets and a solid operation, but losing money. Antero, backed by Warburg Pincus LLC, has been mentioned in the past as a possible target for a takeover (by Spanish energy giant Repsol, but Repsol ended up buying Talisman Energy instead). No, we’ve not heard any recent rumors, specific or unspecific. But don’t be surprised if one of the majors makes a play for Antero. Here’s their 2Q15 update…
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Seventy Seven Energy, an oilfield services company with major operations in the northeast, is the old Chesapeake Oilfield Operating division of Chesapeake–spun off into its own company on July 1, 2014 (see 
What could of been a valuable research project by a Stanford University researcher is, instead, just more “fracking maybe/might/could/possibly affect groundwater” headline grabber. Stanford environmental scientist Dr. Rob Jackson, a seasoned researcher, set out to determine at what depths is fracking safe and does not affect groundwater (“The Depths of Hydraulic Fracturing and Accompanying Water Use Across the United States” — abstract below). The press release describing the research attempts to redefine any shale well drilled and fracked at less than one mile down as a “shallow” well. This is an inaccurate characterization. From the release: “The most recent such study, published in Environmental Science & Technology, finds that at least 6,900 oil and gas wells in the U.S. were fracked less than a mile (5,280 feet) from the surface, and at least 2,600 wells were fracked at depths shallower than 3,000 feet, some as shallow as 100 feet. This occurs despite many reports that describe fracking as safe for drinking water only if it occurs at least thousands of feet to a mile underground, according to Jackson.” If a well was drilled at 3,000 feet down, that’s still 2,000-2,500 feet below water aquifers–a quarter of a mile of solid rock between the two! Not to mention that 2,600 wells out of 44,000 wells Dr. Jackson studied is a puny 6% of the total–a very small percentage. In other words, the vast majority of shale wells drilled are a mile or more under the surface. Interestingly, for all of the talk about “shallow” wells and the potential dangers of fracking, Dr. Jackson’s study “has not found evidence that frack water contaminants seep upward to drinking-water aquifers from deep underground”…
Yesterday CONSOL Energy’s management team hosted their second quarter 2015 analyst and investor conference call. There was major information contained in that call. The big news is that CONSOL just hooked up and tested a new Utica Shale well in Westmoreland County, PA that is the second best initial producing Utica well ever. Just last week MDN told you about the #1 Utica well drilled so far, by EQT (see