Road Trip! EQT CEO Toby Rice Talks to Landowners in Town Hall Mtgs
After a bruising proxy fight, Toby and Derek Rice (formerly from Rice Energy) won control of EQT, the largest natural gas-producing company in the U.S. (see Rice Bros. Win Proxy War to Control EQT – Toby Rice New CEO). Toby Rice has been CEO for barely a month. He announced late last week that he would conduct four “town hall” style meetings with landowners–two this week and two next week.
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This one slipped under the radar for a bit. At the end of June, Pittsburgh-area Falcon Drilling, a Marcellus and Utica shale drilling contractor, announced it is buying out and merging in another Pittsburgh-area drilling company, Complete Drilling Solutions. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Last week MDN brought you an RBN Energy article that outlines how Marcellus/Utica gas hitches a ride to the Gulf Coast to feed several LNG export facilities–specifically the newly-minted Cameron LNG export facility (see
There is no disputing the fact that the Marcellus Shale has fundamentally changed the economic landscape for Pennsylvania–for the better. A former PA state senator and county commissioner from southeast PA recently went on a tour of shale related infrastructure in western PA and wrote an insightful editorial that outlines the case in favor of building *more* natural gas pipelines in the state.
When the anti-fossil fuel Park Foundation pays your salary, your “research” had darned well better reflect an anti-fossil fuel result. Or else the money spigot quickly gets cut off. That’s what explains the latest “study” published (in Europe, not the U.S.) by Cornell University professor Robert Howarth–a study that claims shale drilling is pumping catastrophic amounts of methane into the atmosphere making Mom Earth toast.
We’re highlighting a second scientific study today, this one real. We told you about Cornell University’s Robert Howarth’s faux study that says methane escaping from shale wells is causing the planet to toast. This second study, from Princeton University, actually performed in-the-field experiments to measure methane escaping from Marcellus Shale wells in Pennsylvania. Real science. The study found some 77% of the methane that escapes into the atmosphere comes from 10% of the wells–and concludes if we can identify and fix the 10%, we’ll go a long way to solving the escaping methane issue.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Study breaks down the fastest-growing jobs in WV; Johnson praises students at New Castle School of Trades; NATIONAL: Bloom Energy stock swoons because attitudes on fossil fuel are changing; Oil exports boost US trade balance says Pulitzer Prize winner Daniel Yergin; INTERNATIONAL: New Brunswick Indian tribe blocks shale drilling in province; A few traders are making money off LNG tankers going nowhere.
Democrats and the media (one and the same) are truly a conflicted, schizophrenic bunch. Both national and local Democrats who pretend to be unbiased journalists (what a joke) couldn’t wait to blast out headlines from yesterday’s visit by President Trump to Monaca, PA that Trump is falsely “taking credit” for the Shell ethane cracker, a plant that began life–at least planning stages–during the reign of their Lord and Savior Barack Hussein Obama. Yet in the next breath they write that this plant Trump is taking credit for will produce eeeeevil plastic that’s dooming all life on Mom Earth to extinction. They want credit for the plant, yet they don’t want the plant. What’s a lib Dem to do?
Hoping that lightning strikes twice with the “judges” at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (4th Circus) who read children’s books like The Lorax and use them in their decisions, deep-pocketed Big Green groups have filed a new lawsuit with the quirky judges asking that they overturn federal approvals issued to Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Big Green hopes the clown judges will overturn approvals for MVP the same way they did for Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project.
Ohio recently passed an odious new law (House Bill 6) to prop up two bankrupt nuclear power plants and several coal-fired plants (see
Quick: Which company which recently had a board and upper management shakeup and focuses exclusively on Marcellus/Utica drilling is the #1 natural gas producer in the United States? That’s right, EQT. In a list of the top 40 natgas producers in the U.S. (full list below), it’s striking to note that eight of the top 10 are focused exclusively or primarily on the M-U.
Two radical left members of the U.S. House of Representatives–Chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Peter DeFazio (D-OR), and Congressman Tom Malinowski (D-NJ)–sent a follow-up letter to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) requesting an update on where the special permit for Energy Transport Solutions, LLC to move liquefied natural gas (LNG) by rail stands now that the public comment period has closed. The letter was not *really* about seeking information, but about threatening PHMSA, signaling that the agency had darned well better block LNG by rail. Or else.
This is one of those “feel good” stories. Going back to 2012, a number of officials in Wyoming County and the borough of Tunkhannock began to dream about connecting the borough to locally extracted Marcellus Shale gas. Among those who helped turn the dream into reality were Williams (the pipeline company) and Cabot Oil & Gas (shale driller). Thanks to the efforts of all involved, Tunkhannock eventually received state-backed funding to build “phase one” of the project (see