Rolling in Free Cash Flow, Range Resources Triples Share Buybacks
Range Resources issued its third quarter financial update yesterday and is holding a conference call today to discuss 3Q results. We will cover Range’s full quarterly update tomorrow (so we can grab excerpts from the conference call). In the meantime, the initial big news coming from Range is that the company is tripling its share buyback program to $1.5 billion using free cash flow. What is a share buyback?
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Banpu is Thailand’s largest coal mining company. But Banpu is far more than just a coal company. It has multiple subsidiaries in various energy industries scattered around the globe. For example, here in the U.S., Banpu partners with Kalnin Ventures and operates BKV Corporation (
Expectations play a big role in investing. The financial markets do a lot of anticipating and forecasting and guessing about where a company or entire sector is heading. Such is the game being played right now with expectations for Marcellus/Utica shale gas companies and their forthcoming third quarter financial updates. Given the high price of natural gas during 3Q22, analysts expect shale gas companies to be swimming in free cash flow. The natural follow-on question is, what will they do with all of that extra cash?
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: EQT’s TugHill deal top’s 3Q’s shale M&A; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Texas natural gas drops toward zero as output swamps pipelines; Chesapeake Energy trims workforce ahead of oil properties sale; NATIONAL: We need reasonable energy policies today; Red Queen effect slows shale growth; INTERNATIONAL: U.S. gas exporters looking at fluctuating European market; Oil and gas majors hiring right now; Wave of LNG tankers is overwhelming Europe, hitting natural gas prices.
This is, indeed, a sad day. Last Thursday, Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC (MVP), which is majority owned by and is operated by Equitrans Midstream Corp., filed a notice to voluntarily dismiss eminent domain proceedings against landowner holdouts in North Carolina for land needed to build an extension of MVP into the state, called MVP Southgate. An Equitrans spokesman said the company hasn’t given up on the Southgate extension. We don’t believe it for a New York minute. We’ve seen this movie before when PennEast Pipeline canceled eminent domain, first in Pennsylvania (see 
What the heck is going on with natural gas prices? Last Friday, the NYMEX futures price (based on the Henry Hub spot price) lost another $0.40 to close at $4.96/MMBtu. NGI’s Weekly Spot Gas National Average dropped $0.54 to $4.99/MMBtu. The NYMEX lost $1.49 last week, representing a 23% drop in price–in one week! Last week marked the longest losing streak for natural gas prices (9 straight weeks) since the week ending Feb. 8, 1991, when the market fell for 11 straight weeks. Yuck.
As part of its third quarter 2022 update, Kinder Morgan (KM) CEO Richard Kinder said his company is bullish on U.S. LNG exports. Kinder said he expects (predicts) U.S. LNG exports will more than double, from the current 11 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) to 28 Bcf/d by 2030–less than eight years away. KM flows around 50% of all the molecules that get exported as LNG from this country, so Kinder should know a thing or two about the LNG market.
Last week we told you about a group of brainwashed children at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), who were behaving like spoiled rotten brats, demanding UPenn divest from any company with a whiff of oil or natural gas about it (see 
Last Thursday, representatives from manufacturing and the energy sectors delivered their thoughts on the future of the national and local economies at the 2022 Economic Outlook Conference sponsored by the Wheeling Area Chamber of Commerce. Front and center at the event was talk about the role of shale energy in revitalizing West Virginia and making it THE go-to place to set up new manufacturing operations. One speaker pointed out: “(West Virginia) is the only place in the world where you can build your manufacturing facility on top of your natural resources, your energy, and your raw materials in the middle of the biggest market in the world.”
In June, seemingly out of nowhere, a plan to build an LNG export facility on the banks of the Delaware River south of Philadelphia made big headlines in Philly (see 
Last year the State of Rhode Island, a small Communist stronghold in the United States, voted to phase out the use of all fossil energy by everyone in the state by 2050–the so-called Act on Climate. It’s more like the Shoot Yourself in the Head Act. Of course, passing a law and then trying to accomplish what the law stipulates are two completely different things, as the Commies in Rhode Island are discovering. They are beginning to flail about looking for solutions to how they can force their citizens to dump fossil energy without completely destroying the state’s economy. (Spoiler alert: They won’t find such a solution.)
According to law firm Houston Harbaugh, P.C., deducting fuel costs from landowner royalties continues to be an ongoing and widespread practice. Some leases allow the use of a portion of the raw gas recovered at a well to “fuel” well-pad operations (processing of the gas). Not only are landowners denied a royalty on the fuel gas volume, they also have that same “cost” deducted from their production royalty! According to Houston Harbaugh, this practice of deducting fuel costs must be closely monitored by all landowners.
Republicans in the Pennsylvania Senate have, since April 2021, refused to appoint new members to the five-member Public Utility Commission (PUC) in response to Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf’s unilateral push to force the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax scheme (see