From the article you posted, it appears that RRC knew the potential of the Nora acreage they purchased/exchanged from EQT. The image in the article shows that the RRC’s Nora acreage could contain the Rogersville formation. Likely EQT though in KY, may be kicking themselves since the exchange occurred prior to oil’s slump. I attached Mr. Ventura’s comments regarding the Nora assets and associated images [1st one from the newpaper article] from RRCs presentation from 2014. RRC is currently my only long-term E&P holding. I would expect the midstream assets could be sold in time.
Q3 2014 Earnings Call: Response from analyst question:
Jeffrey L. Ventura - Chief Executive Officer, President and Director:
“Yes, let me take that one. Yes, Nora is really interesting, and Ray mentioned we're doing some fairly low-tech things that are really inexpensive to enhance value of the tight gas sands in CBMs and having great success right out of the box. I think we're 10 for 10 or 12 for 12. But it's interesting, there's potential, deeper potential. Some of that deeper potential is in the Devonian section, literally. I mean, by deep, I mean, we're talking 5,500 feet. But there are other horizons as you go below that. According to our exploration, and we'll see over time, some of the upside or optionality is, even though the southern part of the Appalachian basin is subnormally pressured, our explorationists think as you drill deeper, and remember, deeper may be, ultimately, basement. We're not sure where basement is, which is really exciting. It may be 11,000 12,000, 13,000 feet because nobody's ever drilled that deep. There's only -- the deepest -- most of the well stop at 4,000. Some at the 5,500. There's a couple of wells, one goes to 7,000 and one goes to 7,500. But they're old wells, old technology. No 3D seismic and just a couple of old 2D [ph] lines. Our explorationists feel as you go deeper, you actually break back in to normal pressure, and then potentially, geopressure, which is exciting. And they also think some of those horizons, as you go deeper, may contain liquids or wet gas. Well, we'll see with time. The nice part about it is we have 475,000 acres that are basically unexplored deep. Again, deep, being below 5,500 feet, which isn't really that deep in most parts of the U.S. So we have that potential. We own 475,000 acres, 100% working interest and most of 100% net revenue interest. And we totally control the timing. So what you'll see us do in the short run is experiment with some of these completion techniques, which really is just running a higher strength pipe so we can pump at a higher pressure, pump at higher rates, pump bigger fracs and better stimulate the wells. And there, it's fairly inexpensive, and we're seeing, on average, almost double the rates for an incremental cost of, call it, $15,000. So long-winded answer again, but I think there is the potential for higher pressure as we go deeper and there is the potential for liquids.”