EQT, Chesapeake Interested in Buying M-U Driller Alta Resources
We don’t write much about Alta Resources, a shale drilling company co-founded by the inventor of shale fracking, George Mitchell. But that doesn’t mean Alta doesn’t drill in the Marcellus. In 2020 Alta was in the Top 10 PA drillers list (see Top 10 Shale Drillers in PA for 2020, by Number of Wells Drilled). Alta owns some 547,000 gross (239,000 net) acres producing natural gas from approximately 900 wells in the Marcellus Shale across Bradford, Wyoming, Sullivan, Lycoming, Clinton, and Centre counties in northeast Pennsylvania. In February we told you that Alta is shopping all of their considerable Marcellus assets, looking for a buyer (see Alta Resources Shopping 547K Marcellus Acres, Asking $3B). Looks like EQT and Chesapeake Energy have both been creepin’ ’round Alta’s back stairs…
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In May 2020 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case challenging whether or not the state Attorney General’s office has the right to use a consumer protection law to prosecute companies like Chesapeake Energy and Anadarko over royalty payment shenanigans (see 
The flaky Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Commissioner Neil Chatterjee, who lately has taken to stabbing natural gas pipelines in the back (see 
Over the past few years, radicalized environmentalists have taken the law into their own hands in an effort to block pipeline construction. Some of the more wacky ones decided to build themselves tree stands and live, full-time, up in the top of trees that are in the path of Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP). Their aim was to prevent the trees from being cut down, ultimately blocking construction of the pipeline (see 
In a brilliant move aimed at boxing in the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), two northeastern Pennsylvania State Senators–Gene Yaw and Lisa Baker–along with members of the PA Senate Republican Caucus (27 Senators in all), filed a lawsuit in January against the DRBC accusing the quasi-governmental agency of “taking” the property rights of PA residents without just compensation under the law (see 
Finally! After months and months of dithering around, the Ohio legislature has passed a bill that will overturn and rescind House Bill (HB) 6, the legislation that got passed due to $61 million in bribes spread around by FirstEnergy in what has become Ohio’s biggest bribery scandal ever (see 
Yesterday MDN friend Joe Barone and ShaleDirectories.com hosted the 
Shame on the American Petroleum Institute (API) and its CEO Mike Sommers. They’ve just sold out the oil and gas industry by caving to pressure from their biggest donors (companies like Exxon, Shell and Chevron), embracing a universal carbon tax on the very product they all produce–oil and gas. API is sowing the seeds of its own destruction, but either the API (Big Oil) believes it can cheat death, or is too stupid to understand the end result of their actions. Embracing a carbon tax is terrible news for the shale industry. If you work for a company that belongs to the traitorous API, pressure your management to drop its membership NOW.
The Enervus U.S. rig count continues to climb (a very good sign). For the week ending March 24, the U.S. rig count climbed another 11 active rigs to 513. The oil-focused Permian Basin added eight new rigs. The Marcellus stayed even at 33 active rigs while the Ohio Utica picked up one active rig and now has 12 active rigs. The other major shale gas play, the Haynesville, stayed even at 47 active rigs.
NATIONAL: Kennedy, Cruz introduce bill to promote liquefied natural gas exports; Gasoline prices are high and going higher – here’s why; US gas in storage posts larger-than-expected pull in likely last draw of season; INTERNATIONAL: For most of 2020, China’s refineries processed more crude oil than U.S. refineries; Energy industry grapples with fallout from Suez Canal blockage.
At some point in the distant past (during our lifetime) swamps got renamed to “wetlands.” Don’t you just love how the left euphemizes everything? Chesapeake Energy is a bad actor when it comes to shafting landowners out of royalties, we’ll grant you that. However, the company must now pay Pennsylvania and the federal government (DOJ and EPA) a combined $1.9 million for “failure to identify and protect wetlands at 76 oil and gas well sites in Pennsylvania.” In other words, failure to protect swamps.
Conventional (and maybe shale) oil and gas drillers in West Virginia need to be aware of a late-breaking amendment that will create a new fee (we’d call it a tax) of $100 per year for unplugged wells producing 10 Mcf (10,000 cubic feet) of natural gas. According to the amendment’s sponsor, Sen. William Ihlenfeld II (D-Ohio County), roughly 13,000 wells statewide fit that classification and would generate an extra $800,000 per year for the Department of Environmental Protection’s Office of Oil and Gas.
New Fortress Energy (NFE), which likes to build and own as much of the LNG supply chain as possible, built and operates an LNG import terminal in San Juan, Puerto Rico. After the facility was up and running, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) dinged the company, asking for an explanation as to why they built it without FERC “Mother May I?” permission. New Fortress responded last July saying FERC told them no permission was needed (see 
Yesterday we brought you the news that LOLA Energy continues to transform itself with the purchase of what was EdgeMarc Energy’s shale assets in Butler County, PA (see 
We have to confess we’re not impressed with West Virginia U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (Democrat). We had hoped he might be somewhat independent from the radicals in his own party and provide some balance to an out-of-control leftist agenda being pushed by Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden. Manchin is failing in that regard. He’s just another toady for his party. (We’re not surprised.) The latest evidence that Joe Manchin is not the “man of the people” and “conservative/moderate” Democrat he claims to be comes from his opposition to WV Gov. Jim Justice’s plan to phase out the state income tax–which does have implications for the shale industry.