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Dominion Selling WV Utility – Deal Incl. 2K Miles Gathering Pipes
Dominion Energy is divesting itself from a natural gas utility company it owns in West Virginia–Hope Gas, Inc. Dominion is selling Hope to investment firm Ullico Inc. for $690 million. Ullico plans to combine Hope Gas with another company it owns, Hearthstone Utilities, Inc. The reason this deal caught our attention is that Hope Gas owns and operates “2,000 miles of gathering pipelines” in the Mountain State.
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The list is, unfortunately, long and getting longer. Atlantic Coast Pipeline. PennEast Pipeline. Constitution Pipeline. And others. Yes, each one of those massive projects that got canceled means a loss of revenue for the companies involved, and a loss of takeaway capacity for drillers in the Marcellus/Utica region. However, perhaps the biggest loss is the jobs those projects would have provided for union workers. The cancellation of each of those projects resulted in the loss of revenue and income for union workers–direct harm to families. Have you thought about those costs?
In his first two days in office, Joe Biden declared war on the oil and gas industry. One of the first things he did was to revive an interagency working group on the “social cost” of greenhouse gas emissions and directed the issuance of an “interim” cost (see 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: How W.Va. oil and gas aids U.S. foreign policy; After New Yorkers see sudden price increase, Gov. Kathy Hochul urges Con Ed to reform itself; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: These 23-year-old Texans made $4 million last year mining bitcoin off flare gas from oil drilling; NATIONAL: ESG and the dangerous structural increase in the price of oil; Biden’s empty promise to ‘work like the devil’ on gas prices; INTERNATIONAL: Europe relies primarily on imports to meet its natural gas needs; American gas to Europe’s rescue.
EQT, the country’s largest natural gas producer, issued its fourth quarter and full-year 2021 update yesterday. We have loads of great information. In 4Q21 EQT made $1.8 billion in profit (net income), although the company ended up losing $1.2 billion for the year due to bad bets on hedging. The company produced 527 Bcfe (billion cubic feet equivalent) of natural gas in 4Q21, versus producing 401 Bcfe in 4Q20–an increase of 31%, mainly due to extra production from buying Chevron’s and Alta Resources’ Appalachian assets over the past year. That works out to be an average daily production of 5.85 Bcf/d last quarter–the highest natgas production of any U.S.-based company.
As it has done for the past couple of years, CNX Resources, when issuing quarterly updates, doesn’t bother to issue a handy summary of the numbers. Instead, CNX’s top brass will talk about some of the particulars on a conference call. Folks interested in the details of the lastest quarter have to wait and wade through SEC filings. A few weeks ago the company issued a quarterly 8-K statement, which we included with our review of 4Q21 (see 
The ace reporters at Reuters have sussed out another inside exclusive: Williams, the pipeline giant, has hired “two veteran executives” to help the company set up an LNG marketing operation. The operation will put Williams into direct competition with other big LNG marketers including Cheniere Energy, Shell, and QatarEnergy. The big question is this: How successful will this effort be if Williams doesn’t actually own an LNG export terminal of its own?
Over the years MDN has brought you updated reports from energy law firm giant Haynes and Boone and their quarterly oil and gas bankruptcy filings reports. We are delighted to tell you that due to the decreasing number of bankruptcies in our industry, Haynes and Boone has just issued its final set of reports for 2021 bankruptcies: one report for upstream/drilling, one report for oilfield services, and one report for midstream/pipelines. All of the reports are embedded below. Yes, there are a few M-U companies listed in these final reports.
One of our favorite Forbes website contributors, David Blackmon, has penned another fabulous column. This one looks at the chatter and debate surrounding “the energy transition”–as if it’s a foregone conclusion that we must dump the use of all fossil fuels within the next few years and transition to so-called renewables, or the planet is toast. Blackmon tackles one aspect of this debate that is seldom discussed: the cost of transitioning away from fossil fuels to 100% renewables. The cost is so big, it’s incomprehensible.
Yesterday the New York State Common Retirement Fund announced it will “restrict investments” in a hit list of 21 naughty shale oil and gas producing companies. One of the companies on the naughty list is Chesapeake Energy Corp. New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, trustee of the Fund (far-left Democrat) who is the sole manager of the fund, said the companies on his naughty list “have failed to demonstrate they are prepared for the transition to a low-carbon economy.” However, another 21 shale companies are on DiNapoli’s nice list and he will continue to invest in those companies, including CNX Resources and EQT Corporation.