NFG 4Q – Low Gas Price Good for Customers, Not for Company
National Fuel Gas Company (NFG), headquartered in Western New York (near Buffalo), is the only remaining fully integrated energy company left in the Marcellus/Utica region–maybe in the country. Meaning they are the only company that drills for the energy (oil and gas), pipelines the energy they discover to market (midstream), and is also the utility company that delivers the energy to end users. Big company. Important company. NFG’s drilling arm is called Seneca Resources, and their pipeline/midstream arm is Empire Pipeline. Last Friday NFG issued its quarterly (and full year) update. Both Seneca and Empire got talked about.
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Before environmentalist wackos got really wacko in opposing *anything* remotely related to natural gas, including gas-fired powered plants, Competitive Power Ventures got their 680-megawatt CPV Valley Energy Center in Wawayanda (Orange County), NY approved and (eventually) built and online (see 
With friends like these, who needs enemies? Two utility companies–National Grid and Eversource, both operating in Massachusetts–are the primary customers for the gas that flows through the Spectra Energy/Enbridge Atlantic Bridge pipeline project. The last piece of that project is to build a compressor station in Weymouth, MA. National Grid and Eversource now say the Weymouth compressor is not necessary–they have enough gas without it. Thanks guys! You just screwed Enbridge royally.
EdgeMarc Energy, headquartered in Canonsburg, PA (with 50,000 acres of Marcellus/Utica leases), filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May, looking to sell all of the company’s assets (see 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Southwestern Energy offers to plug abandoned well in Tioga County, PA; Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald denounces Peduto’s anti-cracker plant stance; WVU Extension offers oil & gas program to high school seniors; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Cheniere slips to loss in third quarter; Wyoming natural gas company responds to California blackouts; NATIONAL: Rig count takes another dive; The great shale fracking slowdown has arrived; ‘America First’? Kill the Jones Act; INTERNATIONAL: Denmark green lights Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline; Britain orders immediate moratorium on fracking due to earth tremor concerns.
EQT, the largest natural gas producing company in the U.S., issued its third quarter update yesterday–the first such update since Toby Rice took over as CEO of the company in July. There was a LOT of news coming out of yesterday’s update and conference call. Perhaps the biggest news is that EQT plans to whittle down its outstanding debt by $1.5 billion by selling its stake in Equitrans (formerly EQT Midstream), and by selling “noncore” assets outside of its wet gas operating area. That is, EQT is looking to sell its assets in southern West Virginia, Ohio and central Pennsylvania.
Williams, one of the largest midstream (pipeline) companies in the U.S., released its third quarter update yesterday. The company has major operations in the northeast, including the Marcellus (mainly) and the Utica. Williams is the operator of the mighty Transco pipeline system that carries a significant amount of Marcellus gas south. The company wants to build a new 23-mile pipeline to the New York City/Long Island region, called the Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline, which is currently being blocked by both New York and New Jersey. We have news from yesterday’s 3Q update on NESE, Transco and the Williams northeast PA gathering system.
As MDN reported in early October, so-called “activist investors” Elliott Management and D.E. Shaw want Marathon Petroleum (parent of MPLX, otherwise known as MarkWest Energy) to split itself into three separate companies, and a couple of other large shareholders called for Marathon CEO Gary Heminger to be fired (see 
Yesterday MDN brought you the news the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has agreed to hear 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 
Paul Driessen is the senior policy advisor for the 
In December 2015, Pennsylvania’s felony-indicted Attorney General, Kathleen Kane (who later was convicted and did jail time) brought a lawsuit against Chesapeake Energy and Anadarko accusing them of royalty fraud (see 
Of all the issues that drives us crazy, this one is near or at the top of the list–the charge that building a low-emissions compressor station for Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) about an hour outside of Richmond, Virginia is “racist” because it will be built in a community founded by emancipated slaves following the Civil War. The so-called “environmental justice” issue.
Antero Resources, one of the biggest and best “pure play” drillers focused on the Marcellus/Utica (with major operations in West Virginia), released their third quarter update yesterday. The company reports producing an amazing 3.37 billion cubic feet equivalent per day (Bcfe/d) of natural gas production (32% liquids), while spending just $290 million to do it–the lowest quarterly spend since the company went public in 2013. On the down side, the company reported a $150 million net loss, but that’s mainly because of a one-time “impairment charge,” meaning it was a paper loss, not a cash out-of-pocket loss.
In September, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued a precedent-setting decision that disallows PennEast Pipeline from using the federally-delegated power of eminent domain to cross properties either owned by, or with easements granted to, the state of New Jersey (see