EQT CEO Toby Rice Explains Combo Drilling at WV Town Hall Mtg
Last week MDN told you that EQT CEO Toby Rice is conducting a series of four “town hall” style meetings with landowners in regions where the company drills (see EQT CEO Toby Rice Hits a Home Run with Landowner Meetings). The first meeting, held in Green County last Wednesday night, was a huge success. We also reported in a followup story that Toby mentioned EQT’s new drilling strategy to make money in a low gas price environment is called “combo development” (see EQT Plans to Make Money with $2/Mcf NatGas Price).
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Kinder Morgan, the largest pipeline company in the U.S., has left a string of broken promises about the date for which the first Elba Island LNG export plant “mini-train” would begin producing and shipping LNG. We’ve chronicled the journey extensively. According to an official update from KM in July, Elba was “in advanced stages of the commissioning and start up process, including LNG production” (see 
If Jeff Bezos (Amazon CEO) and Tim Cook (Apple CEO) jump off a cliff, should you, as CEO of an energy company, jump off too? The CEOs of ExxonMobil, Chevron, Marathon Petroleum and several other big oil and gas companies have just answered that question in the affirmative. Splat. Perhaps they were caught up in the euphoria of the moment. Perhaps they were shamed. (A new disorder for the DSM V: “CEO shaming.”) For whatever reason, a group of CEOs from some of the largest U.S. companies now say the people who buy their company’s stock and fund them via infusions of investment capital are no longer the #1 priority for their companies. We wonder what investors in those companies think. Have they had a change of heart? “Here, take my money and pee it away with no returns. Please! I don’t need this money any more.” Hey Jeff and Tim, we have a bridge in Brooklyn we’d like to sell ya…
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Officials call for safe, secure closure of bankrupt Philadelphia refinery; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Cheniere Energy extends contract for CEO Jack Fusco; NATIONAL: There is no credible way to transport oil and natural gas without pipelines; U.S. energy policy must support natural gas in Appalachia and West Texas; Natural gas production hits new all-time high, further worsening the medium-term outlook; Big Wind’s big headwinds; States push 1st Circ. to revive suit over EPA ‘expert purge’.
Last Thursday morning at 6:30 am Blue Racer Midstream’s Natrium (Marshall County, WV) natural gas processing plant received a phoned-in bomb threat. Plant personnel immediately contacted law enforcement (local, state and federal) who swept the plant with bomb-sniffing dogs. Nothing was found.
For years MDN has observed that Cabot Oil & Gas is one of the few Marcellus/Utica drilling companies that can “spin straw into gold”–meaning it makes money on selling natural gas even when the price of that gas is in the basement (see 
Some 77 miles of PennEast Pipeline’s $1 billion, 120-mile primarily 36-inch underground pipeline is slated to run through Pennsylvania. The rest runs through New Jersey. In February of this year the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) published draft versions of Erosion and Sediment Control Permits for the project. Just one teeny tiny problem: The DEP screwed up the application number in their official posting in the PA Bulletin. So the DEP has just republished their intent to issue the permits–very soon–in the latest PA Bulletin.
Last November Encino Acquisition Partners (i.e. Encino Energy) completed its purchase of all of Chesapeake Energy’s Ohio Utica Shale assets for $2 billion (see 
There’s an issue that has been building up steam for the past year or two. We’ve commented on it peripherally on a number of occasions. There’s no mistaking the newest “in thing” for young (and old) liberals is to trash the production of plastic. Plastic straws are killing little fishies in the deep blue sea. Plastic bags are filling up our landfills and endangering Mom Earth. California (land of the strange) now has its sights set on banning all plastic bottles. Radical environmentalists are now advocating that we ban the production and manufacture of all plastic products!