Consol Makes Big Bucks Off Marcellus Sale

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

August 18, 2011 | 1:51 PM

Consol Energy took in more than $3 billion, by selling half of its Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale holdings. (A Shale sale, if you will.)
More from the Post-Gazette:

Consol Energy has sold half of its 663,350 Marcellus Shale acres in Pennsylvania and West Virginia to Noble Energy Inc. for $3.4 billion, a move that gives the Cecil-based energy company immediate cash on hand to further its development as a stronger presence in the natural gas drilling arena.
Under the joint development plan with the Houston-based oil and gas firm, Consol will expand the number of Marcellus operations from its four current sites to eight rigs in 2012 and then 12 rigs in 2013, before reaching a plateau of 16 horizontal rigs in 2015. The company has a production target of 350 billion cubic feet of gas by 2015.
The $3.4 billion payment, to be paid in increments to the company, comes after Consol executives have asked for shareholders’ patience in seeing the Marcellus Shale boom reflected in the company’s stock price.
“We’re talking about 20, 30 years; we’re not talking about tomorrow or the day after that,” said Chief Executive Officer J. Brett Harvey at the annual shareholder’s meeting in May.