Energy Companies

Extreme Makeover: EQT Edition

Oil & Gas Investor magazine recently sat down with Toby Rice, CEO of EQT Corporation, to discuss his (and his brother Derek’s) successful takeover of the company in July 2019. The lengthy article begins this way: “A year and a half after leading a mutiny of shareholders to take control of the nation’s largest natural

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Beaver Community College Opens $5M Shell Cracker Training Facility

The Community College of Beaver County’s (CCBC) Shell Center for Process Technology, a $5 million state-of-the-art training facility, has just officially opened. While the Center was built to train employees to run the Shell ethane cracker plant, it’s also training people for a myriad of other opportunities too.This post appeared first on Marcellus Drilling News.

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SWPA Marcellus Well Becomes World’s Longest Onshore Lateral

A well in the Marcellus Shale in (of all places) Plum Borough in Allegheny County, PA (a suburb of Pittsburgh) has dethroned a well in the Ohio Utica as the longest onshore lateral drilled…in the world! Olympus Energy (formerly Huntley & Huntley Exploration) has drilled and completed a well with a 20,060-foot lateral–3.8 miles long!This

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Weekly Shale Drilling Permits for PA, OH, WV: Dec 14-18

Last week Pennsylvania issued 25 new shale well drilling permits in both northeast and southwest PA, although most of the permits for SWPA. Ohio issued 4 new shale well permits, all of them to the same company (Encino Energy) and the same well pad (in Harrison County). West Virginia issued 6 new shale well permits,

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PA DEP Issues Fed. 401 Water Crossing Permit to NFG’s FM100 Pipe

In March 2019 MDN told you about National Fuel Gas Company’s (NFG) FM100 Project in northwestern Pennsylvania that will beef up and extend an existing pipeline network to flow an extra 330 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of Marcellus gas to Williams’ mighty Transco Pipeline (see NFG FM100 Pipe Project in NW PA to

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Oaktree Capital Invests $100M in Banpu, Promises Another $600M

Oaktree Capital Management, a huge investment firm with 1,000 employees and $140 billion in assets under management, is investing some of its considerable stach in BKV Corporation. BKV (which stands for Banpu Kalnin Ventures) is the American shale drilling arm of Banpu, Thailand’s largest coal mining company. BKV/Banpu has invested ~$500 million in the PA

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Predatory Hedge Fund “Engine No. 1” Targets Exxon for Takeover

While so-called “activist investors” can sometimes accomplish good things (like the Rice boys in their takeover of EQT last year), it is our observation that most “activist investors” are destructive. A new hedge fund calling itself Engine No. 1 is one such destructive company. The hedge fund, based in San Francisco (which explains a lot)

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M-U Companies Must “Walk the ESG Walk” to Get Investment Money

click for larger version On Wednesday, Hart Energy held its annual DUG (Developing Unconventional Gas) East event. This year the event was virtual instead of in-person at the convention center in Pittsburgh. One acronym seemed to be on the lips of nearly every speaker at this year’s event: ESG, which stands for “environment, social, governance.”

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CNX CEO Nick Deluliis Talks About “Hard Truths” in M&A at DUG East

Yesterday CNX CEO Nick Deluliis was one of the keynote speakers at the annual DUG (Developing Unconventional Gas) East event, held virtually this year. Normally DUG is held at the Convention Center in Pittsburgh. Deluliis’ talk was wide-ranging, but much of it concentrated on mergers and acquisitions, particularly M&A in the Marcellus/Utica. Deluliis is not

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Judge Allows Class Action Against EQT/Rice 2017 Merger to Proceed

In June 2019 the Cambridge (Massachusetts) Retirement System sued EQT claiming EQT’s executives had made false and misleading statements about their 2017 purchase of Rice Energy–claims about cost efficiencies that never materialized, and claims about the location of Rice leases that were not as close to EQT’s acreage as claimed (see Mass. Retirement Fund Sues

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2021 Upstream Outlook: M-U CEOs Say Gas Market Will Improve

Yesterday Hart Energy held its annual (always excellent) DUG (Developing Unconventional Gas) East event. Normally the event is held at the Convention Center in Pittsburgh. This year it was an all-virtual event. Among the speakers were CNX CEO Nick Deluliis, PennEnergy Resources CEO Rich Weber, and Ascent Resources CEO Jeff Fisher. While it’s not all

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Ascent Resources Selling Some Ohio Assets in “Core” of Utica Play

Ascent Resources has listed for sale two “packages” of its assets in the core of the Utica Shale in Ohio. One package contains a non-operated interest in 68 wells and 1,362 net leasehold acres. The second package includes a royalty interest in 10 wells and 106 net revenue interest acres. Details on where the assets

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Weekly Shale Drilling Permits for PA, OH, WV: Nov. 23-27

Last week Pennsylvania issued 12 new shale well drilling permits with a mix of permits issued in both the southwest (wet gas) and northeast (dry gas) regions of the state. Ohio issued 7 new permits, all of them except one in the same county (Jefferson). West Virginia was a goose egg–no new permits issued last

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ExxonMobil Announces Plan to Divest “Certain” N.A. Dry Gas Assets

Yesterday ExxonMobil released the outlines of its development plan for the next five years. We previously alerted you that Exxon was looking to write down (impair) up to $30 billion of its assets, including (potentially) its assets in the Marcellus/Utica (see ExxonMobil Deciding Fate of XTO Asset Value in 4Q). Indeed it has happened, albeit

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Diversified Gas & Oil Plays Big Role in Kentucky O&G Industry

Diversified Gas & Oil (DGO) is a fascinating company (see our DGO stories here). DGO’s strategy is to buy wells in “the long tail.” That is, wells already drilled with production far along the decline curve, but wells that will continue to produce small amounts for years to come. In October, DGO CEO Rusty Hutson,

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