25 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Nov 27 – Dec 3

New shale permits issued for Nov 27 – Dec 3 in the Marcellus/Utica were much improved over the previous few weeks. There were 25 new permits issued last week versus 14 issued two weeks ago and just one new permit three weeks ago. So the trend is our friend! Last week’s permit tally included 15…

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DUG Appalachia: Encino Looks to Grow Oil Production in OH Utica

Hart Energy keeps the hits rolling, publishing interviews and articles from the recent DUG Appalachia event held in Pittsburgh in November. The latest is a transcript of an interview between Hart Energy’s editorial director and Encino Energy’s CTO. According to the CTO, the company uses “machine learning” to perfect its oil drilling in the northern…

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DUG Appalachia: Diversified Buys, Optimizes, Holds for Long-Term

One of the speakers at the recent Hart Energy DUG Appalachia event in Pittsburgh was Douglas Kris, senior vice president of Diversified Energy. For years, we have highlighted Diversified’s “contrarian” business model (see our Diversified stories here). Diversified Energy (formerly Diversified Gas & Oil), with major assets in the Marcellus/Utica as well as other regions,…

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DUG Appalachia: Greylock Energy Plans to “Test Utica” in 2024

Greylock Energy is headquartered in Charleston, WV, with offices in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Wyoming and operations scattered throughout Appalachia and the Rockies. The company’s assets comprise more than 1.19 million acres, about 6,700 wells, including the operation of 4,000 wells throughout Appalachia (shale and conventional) and 2,600 miles of pipeline. Ryan Deaderick, executive…

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EQT Signs Oil & Gas Decarbonization Charter at UN COP28

There’s been a lot of news coming from the UN COP28 climate event in Dubai. In some respects, we feel like it’s a firehose of news about leftists targeting fossil energy (even though the event is being hosted by the CEO of a fossil fuel company). COP28 runs from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12, so…

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Ohio Utica Shale Production 3Q23 – Top Wells, Drillers & Counties

The Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) released production numbers for the third quarter of 2023 late last week, and nobody noticed…except MDN (thanks to a tip from a good friend). ODNR no longer issues a press release to summarize the results as they once did. We’ve got the full spreadsheet with oil and gas…

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DUG Appalachia: Chesapeake Delighted with M-U and Haynesville

Chesapeake Energy is a stellar turnaround story. Years of mountainous debt pushed the company into bankruptcy in June 2020 (see Chesapeake Files for Bankruptcy – Debtors to Take Ownership). After Chessy exited bankruptcy, the new owners booted CEO Doug Lawler in April of 2021 (see Doug Lawler Out as CEO of Chesapeake Energy). Lawler tried…

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Utica Drilling in Columbiana County, OH, Came Alive in November

Columbiana County, OH, located in the northern portion of the Utica Shale play in the Buckeye State, has recently come roaring back to life. In 2022, there were 41 permits issued to drill in the Utica in Columbiana County. So far, in 2023, there have been 35 permits issued to drill in Columbiana County. But…

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Shell’s PA Ethane Cracker Restarts After Weeks of Maintenance

Shell’s mighty ethane cracker plant in Monaca (Beaver County), PA, has been shut down for “weeks” in order to conduct maintenance on the plant. The cracker plant, according to the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), has been down since October and is just now restarting. By our math, it was down for the entire…

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DEP Allows EQT to Continue Work at Greene Well Frac-Out Site

In July 2022, MDN brought you news of a possible frac-out, or “inadvertent return” that happens when drilling mud pops out of places where it’s not supposed to — places outside the borehole being drilled (see Possible Frac-Out Reported at EQT Well Site in Greene County, PA). A landowner who lives near a well being…

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14 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Nov 20 – 26

New shale permits issued for Nov 20 – 26 in the Marcellus/Utica was anemic but better than the prior pathetic report of just a single new permit (see 1 New Shale Well Permit Issued for PA-OH-WV Nov 13 – 19). There were 14 new permits issued last week. Last week’s permit tally included 7 new…

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PennEnergy Resources Gets Perfect “A” Methane Grade from MiQ

In January of 2022, PennEnergy Resources LLC, the 11th largest shale driller in Pennsylvania, achieved responsibly sourced natural gas certification from Project Canary on nearly all of its wells (see PennEnergy Receives “Responsibly Sourced Gas” Rating for Most Wells). Project Canary issued its top “Gold” and “Platinum” ratings on (at that time) 375 of PennEnergy’s…

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M-U Driller Profits Bounce Back into the Black for 3Q23

It’s been a financial roller coaster for oil and gas drillers over the past 15 years. Investors in shale oil and gas companies suffered for years with little or no returns for their invested money. Five of eight large Marcellus/Utica drillers saw their share prices decrease by an astonishing 85% or more from 2008 to…

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NOG Invests in Utica Wells, Acreage Operated by Ascent Resources

In February 2021, Northern Oil and Gas, Inc. (NOG), a company that invests in non-operated oil and gas assets (they let others do the drilling), announced it had purchased 64,000 net acres producing ~120 MMcfe/d (million cubic feet equivalent per day) in the Marcellus/Utica from Reliance Industries Limited (see Northern O&G Buys 64K Acres of…

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West Deer Approves Olympus Compressor Stn at Well Pad Site

Olympus Energy (formerly Huntley & Huntley) drills in the Greater Pittsburgh region, in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties. Olympus owns a pipeline subsidiary called Hyperion Midstream that builds gathering lines to the company’s wells. Hyperion applied to build a compressor station on a recently approved Olympus well pad in rural West Deer Township (Allegheny County). The…

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