Aubrey McClendon Takes on the World: New JV in Mexico
We don’t know how he does it, but it seems Aubrey McClendon can charm money out of just about anyone. Not even two weeks ago we told you that McClendon cut a deal to lease 21.5 million acres in Australia for shale drilling (see Aubrey McClendon Leases 21.5 MILLION Acres…in Australia?!). Apparently not content with the U.S. and Australia, McClendon announced today he’s charmed money out of Mexico’s EIM Capital to “jointly pursue” opportunities in oil and gas drilling south of the border. The press announcement below seems to indicate that McClendon is the one doing the investing–into EIM Capital. But that makes no sense. McClendon is up to his eyeballs in debt (see Has Aubrey McClendon Finally Hung Himself with High Debt?). Which leads us to say, Aubrey has the unusual ability to charm money from just about anyone (and make them think Aubrey’s the one doing the investing!)…
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Do #UpstateLivesMatter? Apparently not to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Upstaters are officially fed up with being told what they can and can’t do–through the prism of New York City liberal values. New York City gets its water supply from upstate and therefore believes upstate is nothing more than a serfdom–its residents exist at the pleasure and will (and direction) of their overlords in NYC. We are at the beck and call of downstate–here only to serve at their leisure. One way downstate is controlling upstate is Gov. Cuomo’s attempt to disarm the citizens of the state, denying them their Constitutional right to bear arms (no doubt afraid of that power) via the misnamed SAFE Act. Cuomo also told upstaters they can’t drill for natural gas under their own land–sentencing family farms to a life of poverty–in the name of environmental and “public health” protection. Upstaters have had enough of downstate interference and are pushing to have their counties either secede and join the great state of Pennsylvania, or divide the state into two autonomous districts, each with their own governor. It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. What started as a fringe movement is going mainstream, as evidenced by a rally held this past Sunday in Bainbridge, NY. The secede or divide movement has anti-frackers worried…
A dozen aging protesters (some of them former hippies) paced back and forth with apparently with nothing better to do, in front of an office building in Pittsfield, Massachusetts where Kinder Morgan has a small office. The protesters were there to demand that New Englanders continue to pay 4x what everyone else across the country pays for electricity, and to protest in favor of rolling blackouts in New England when electricity supplies dip because of high demand and lack of generating capacity, and to protest the availability of abundant, cheap, and clean-burning natural gas to heat their homes. Yep, they are stark, raving mad–and taken seriously by the liberal media in Massachusetts which covers this tiny minority of wackos as if they represent “everybody” in New England. The protesters, in their own words, told reporters why they oppose Kinder Morgan’s Northeast Energy Direct pipeline that will bring cheap, abundant and clean-burning Marcellus Shale gas to Massachusetts and other New England states: because they hate all fossil fuels, including clean-burning natural gas…
Yet another delay for Kinder Morgan’s proposed Northeast Energy Direct project–an extension of the Tennessee Gas Pipeline from the shale fields of northeastern Pennsylvania through New York, into Massachusetts, then New Hampshire before ending near Boston. It is a $6 billion project with 177 miles of new (greenfield) pipeline construction meant to alleviate the severe shortage of natural gas in New England. Last Friday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the government agency in charge of permissioning the project, issued a memo stating they have extended the deadline for public comment on the plan. A new deadline has not yet been decided. The delay delights anti-fossil fuelers…
More high finance stuff–this time in the midstream world. Crestwood Equity Partners LP and Crestwood Midstream Partners are, on paper, two different companies. Crestwood Equity Partners is a master limited partnership (MLP) that operates an NGL supply and logistics business and currently owns, on paper, 4% of Crestwood Midstream Partners, a pipeline business operating in multiple U.S. shale plays. Crestwood Midstream also has an NGL business. The two Crestwood companies merged with and took over Inergy Midstream in an $8 billion deal in October 2013 (see 
Gastar Exploration, which concentrates its shale drilling program in Oklahoma and West Virginia, earlier this year announced they would not drill any new wells in the Marcellus/Utica until commodity prices in Appalachia improve (see 
It was only three weeks ago that MDN reported Alpha Natural Resources, a coal company driven into bankruptcy by Barack H. Obama’s draconian EPA, filed for bankruptcy (see 
This story is amusing–PA Democrat infighting over the composition of the PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s Pipeline Infrastructure Task Force. You’ll recall we brought you Wolf’s announcement that the PennFuture Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection, John Quigley, would head a new task force to oversee (i.e. slow down) the development of local shale gas gathering pipelines (see 
With fewer new wells being drilled in Pennsylvania, and more inspectors added to the roles at the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), as you might expect, there have been more inspections of existing/older gas and oil wells. In fact, the DEP has conducted 1,700 more inspections over the first seven months of 2015 than they did in 2014. The oil and gas division of the DEP has added 25 new employees in the past 12 months–even though drilling activity has gone down. Typical government boondoggle. You can’t hire people and give them nothing to do. Well, you can, but that doesn’t look good for a new governor. So the DEP has hauled out the magnifying glass to look under every rock on the well pad. And what have they found? Despite 16% more inspections of shale operations this year, the total number of violations has gone down–from 283 violations for the first seven months of 2014, to 205 violations for the first seven months in 2015. However, violations for conventional drillers over the same period have gone up…
The Philadelphia-based anti-fossil fuel group Clean Air Council has announced through their media/public relations mouthpiece (the taxpayer-funded PBS StateImpact Pennsylvania) that they’ve launched yet another frivolous lawsuit–this time against Sunoco Logistics and their Mariner East 2 pipeline plan. Clean Air Council has launched so many lawsuits against the oil and gas industry we’ve lost count of the number. The Clean Air Council, once called The Delaware Valley Citizens’ Council for Clean Air, is a non-profit (i.e. non-taxed) group engaging in political activity in violation of their non-profit charter–yet government officials ignore those violations. The Clean Air Council, without standing, filed a lawsuit in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas (the lowest trial court, essentially what other states call county court), charging that Sunoco Logistics, contrary to decades of accepted recognition as a public utility in Pennsylvania, is not actually a public utility and therefore cannot assert eminent domain against a few holdout landowners who refuse to allow the Mariner East 2 pipeline to be placed next to the existing Mariner East 1 pipeline already crossing their land…
The New England Coalition for Affordable Energy, a pro-fossil fuel group backed by business groups and unions in throughout all six New England states, issued the results of a study they commissioned that asks the question, What will happen in New England if energy infrastructure, like natural gas pipelines, does not get built? The study, titled “The Economic Impacts of Failing to Build Energy Infrastructure in New England” (full copy below), finds the impacts–if these projects are not built–are dire: Electric ratepayers will pay $5.4 billion in higher electricity costs; 52,000 private sector jobs will be lost; household spending will go down a collective $12.5 billion; $9 billion of investment and 115,600 jobs that would have been created by such projects will never happen; and the list goes on. Here’s the announcement and summary of the findings, followed by a full copy of the study…
Once again the issue of “foreigners” taking jobs away from “locals” is rearing its ugly head. Over the past few years the pace of drilling and the construction of infrastructure like pipelines and compressor stations has been so rapid, the fact that companies import experienced workers from other states like Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana didn’t seem to bother anyone. Now that drilling rigs are being laid down and pipeline construction is slowing, local union workers who are out of work are questioning why they don’t get the remaining jobs first, ahead of the out-of-towners…
The 19-member West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Industry Safety Commission, a group created by an executive order from Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, met for the first time on August 13 (see 