Rex Energy Gets 3rd Extension to Pay Defaulted IOU
Three weeks ago Rex Energy filed a notice with the Securities and Exchange Commission to alert shareholders that the company has defaulted on an interest payment due on senior notes (see Rex Energy Defaults on IOUs, Can’t File Annual Report on Time). Rex said in the filing that the noteholders to whom payment is due (Angelo, Gordon & Co.) signed a temporary “forbearance” agreement that gives Rex a little breathing room–until April 16 to pay up. Angelo, Gordon & Co. promised not to take any action until that date. April 16 arrived without a deal, so Rex and Angelo signed a second forebearance agreement giving Rex another extension–until April 23–to either pay or agree to a new deal (see Rex Energy Gets 1 Extra Wk to Pay Defaulted IOU, Files Annual Report). April 23 came and went with no deal, and once again Rex and Angelo signed an agreement, the third such forbearance agreement, giving Rex one more week. Rex is not only having trouble paying its debt obligations, a few weeks back Rex’s stock was relegated to the penny stock Pink Sheets (see Rex Energy Stock De-Listed by Nasdaq as of April 12th). We have no inside knowledge of what’s happening behind the scenes, but we’re sure of this: There is a lot of heated discussion taking place. Rex previously floated the possibility of declaring bankruptcy. One thing’s for sure–something will have to happen soon…
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Homeowners who live near the location of a possible ethane cracker plant in Belmont County, OH are running out of time to negotiate a deal to sell their properties. Living next door to a cracker plant is not anyone’s idea of paradise. There will be noise, and smells and (yes) some air pollution coming from the plant. Best to sell now before the plant begins construction. However, representatives for PTT Global Chemical which will build the plant (IF it gets built), say they already have all the land they need for the facility (see 
We’ve written a number of posts over the years about the ongoing, sometimes quiet sometimes not, civil war between Pennsylvania landowners and some (not all) drillers who use inflated post-production deductions to pad their own bottom lines, leaving landowners with peanuts–sometimes with no royalties at all (see 
The “best of the rest”–stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading: PA Game Commission slaps moratorium on wind turbines; work begins on New Sewickley compressor station; truck driver shortage in the Permian means drivers making $125K/year; yes, solar and wind really do increase electricity prices; markets ignore Trump OPEC comments at their own peril; Kuwait Energy begins producing natgas from field in southern Iraq; strong Asian LNG demand may be able to absorb U.S. supplies; and more!
Hypersensitive: excessively or abnormally sensitive. That’s the word we would use to describe what’s happening in Chester County, PA–a suburb of Philadelphia–with regard to underground horizontal directional drilling work (HDD) being performed by Sunoco Logisitics Partners on the Mariner East 2 pipeline project. The company keeps having “inadvertent returns”–which we call leaks. Drilling mud (bentonite) used to cool the drill bit goes down the hole, and sometimes it pops back up on the surface in a different place from where it went down. Since the drilling mud is non-toxic clay and water (same stuff used to make kitty litter, toothpaste and lipstick), it’s no big deal. Unless there’s thousands of gallons of it turning up in a creek where it can smother fish and aquatic life. There’s cracks in the ground near the surface and sometimes the mud leaks out of those cracks. Sunoco must track leaks of down to less than one gallon. Antis look at the numbers and make wild claims that the pipeline has leaked “over 100 times” since drilling began. While technically true, many of those leaks are nothingburgers–not worth tracking or talking about (a few gallons at most). However, some of the leaks are big and yes, those do need talking about. Over the past week or so another four leaks have occurred in Chester County, totaling 8,000 gallons. Fortunately none of it ended up in a creek. Because of the leaks, the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has, once again, shut down any further HDD work in Chester County…
NOTE: A previous version of this post reported a total price of $3.2 million, now changed to account for the addition of an extra $2.4M for required SEPs. See below.
This is almost beyond words. Earlier this week MDN reported that arrest warrants had been issued for a 61 year-old woman and her daughter sitting 30 feet up in the top of a tree that needs to come down to make way for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (see 
The Penn State campus in Erie County (called Penn State Behrend) has been tapped by the PA Dept. of Community and Economic Development (DCED) to be the “lead partner” for developing business and market opportunities for the state related to the mighty $6 billion Shell ethane cracker–currently under construction in Beaver County. Erie County where Behrend is located is certainly not next door to the cracker, not nearly as close as some other Penn State campuses. So why was Behrend selected? In a word, plastics. “The strength of Erie’s plastics industry and the success of Penn State Behrend’s School of Engineering, which offers one of only six accredited U.S. plastics undergraduate programs, makes Erie of particular interest to DCED.” According to DCED’s Denise Brinley, senior energy adviser, “Penn State Behrend can provide critical connections to research support, materials testing and a talent pipeline that will add value to this large-scale petrochemical investment and associated growth in the plastics sector.” Penn State is kicking in a $250,000 grant to their Energy University Partnership for oil and gas strategies, to help prime the pump…
MDN reported two weeks ago that a subsidiary of Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi wants to build a huge, new $1.5 billion natural gas-fired electric generating plant in the Meadowlands (New Jersey), just outside of New York City (see 
As supporters of the fossil fuel industry, we must deal with the issue of catastrophic, man-made global warming head-on. Our kids now grow up believing this lie, and they turn into activists demanding action–sometimes to the point of violence–in support of this lie. We recently read an opinion column by a young woman who appears to be bright, earnest, talented, dedicated–and she believes the lies taught to her about fossil fuels and their role in society. She recently protested in Albany, willing to risk arrest, all in the name of demanding Gov. Cuomo end the use of all fossil fuels in New York State. She’s deathly afraid (we’d call it a phobia) of a common occurrence: the construction and operation of a natural gas-fired power plant in Orange County, NY. What this young woman apparently doesn’t understand is that New York would be plunged back into the Dark Ages if we were to forgo all fossil fuel use–as she is demanding via her protests. Wall Street would move to another state with no electricity to operate its computer networks. Disease and death would be rampant throughout the state. Reliable electricity (used to charge the phone she uses to snap selfies of her protest marches and arrests) would be a thing of the past. It’s really quite sad that this young woman has been completely and incontrovertibly miseducated. Lied to. Education malpractice. The real shame is that she parades her abject ignorance for the world to see. The miseducation of our youth–the intentional lies told to them about man-made global warming, must stop…
A new fight is shaping up in the (crumbling) Empire State. Once again Andrew Cuomo, at the prompting of Big Green groups (corrupted by their big donations to his campaign war chest) has instructed his lackeys who run the Dept. of Environment Conservation (DEC) to reject a modest pipeline expansion proposal by Williams’ Transco Pipeline subsidiary. The project, which we’ve previously written about and are actively promoting, is called the Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) project (see 
Blue Racer Midstream is a pipeline and processing plant company–a joint venture between Caiman Energy II and Dominion Energy–that owns several natural gas processing and fractionation plants, 570 miles of natgas gathering pipelines, and 151 miles of NGL and condensate pipelines in OH and WV. The company’s primary focus from the beginning has been on handling and processing “wet gas” in eastern OH, northern WV and western PA. Blue Racer processes and transports NGLs (natural gas liquids) to market by all means possible–pipeline, rail and yes, even barge (see 