Activist Investor Attacks Diversified, Tries (Fails) to Tank Stock
Ever heard of short selling? It’s a trading strategy of speculating on a stock’s decline in price. According to Investopedia, “In short selling, a position is opened by borrowing shares of a stock, bond, or other asset that the investor believes will decrease in value. The investor then sells these borrowed shares to buyers willing to pay the market price. Before the borrowed shares must be returned, the trader is betting that the price will continue to decline and they can purchase the shares at a lower cost.” A so-called activist investor (we call them corporate raiders) in London called Snowcap Research bought (or borrowed) shares of Diversified Energy’s stock and then issued a 39-page screed claiming Diversified won’t be able to plug the wells it owns and will likely cut its dividend within 12 months. The screed is aimed at forcing the price of Diversified’s stock down so Snowcap can make a profit.
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Two weeks ago, MDN warned you that the Bidenistas were conducting a secret “review,” being led by the Department of Energy (DOE), to evaluate whether regulators should consider mythical “climate change” when deciding whether a proposed natural gas export project meets “the national interest” (see 
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Here’s a story we haven’t written about in over three years. American Water Management Services (AWMS) owns a wastewater injection well in Trumbull County that supposedly caused a low-level earthquake (that nobody could feel) in 2014. Actually, there are two injection wells located at the site, both operated by AWMS. They were both “temporarily” shut down by the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources following the quake nobody could feel (see 
In June 2019, the New York State legislature passed a horrific “energy” bill that was later signed into law by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (see 
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MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Impact fees breathe life into county & municipal projects; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Texas upstream oil employment keeps growing; NATIONAL: Predictive maintenance plays crucial role in oil and gas; Kinder Morgan remains bullish on natural gas demand growth; INTERNATIONAL: EU needs to double powergen by 2040 to meet net zero.
Yesterday we brought you the latest update on EOG Resources’ oil drilling program in the Utica Shale (see 
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From time to time, the issue of wells that need plugging appears in the news. We highlighted one such story earlier this week (see 
In March 2023, the West Virginia legislature passed House Bill 3110, giving the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) extra funds to hire more oil and gas well inspectors. At that time, the state had just ten inspectors to oversee not only all of the state’s 75,000 documented/known wells but also the state’s estimated 15,000 abandoned wells. Frankly, it’s an impossible task for so few inspectors. HB 3110 provided funding for another 10 positions (20 inspectors total). In the past year, the DEP has hired another five, with two more in the pipeline, for a total of 17. It would be better if they had 40 or more!
In May 2023, MDN brought readers the sad news that New York State has fallen and is now under a Communist dictatorship, with the freedom to choose energy sources now gone (see 
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Perhaps our headline is slightly misleading. EOG is not the modern equivalent of Jed Clampett walking along and seeing crude bubbling up out of the ground (as in the fictional