For more than a decade, MDN has brought you stories about shale development on and under land controlled by the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District (MWCD), an agency formed in 1933 to help control flooding and promote water conservation in the Muskingum River watershed area of Ohio, an area that covers 8,000 square miles (see our…
Read More...Yeah, the bottom pretty much fell out of the rig count last week, both nationally and for the Marcellus/Utica region. We’re hitting new lows with both counts. For the M-U, Pennsylvania stayed the same with 21 active rigs, but Ohio lost one rig, and West Virginia lost two rigs last week, for a net loss…
Read More...Gulfport Energy, the third-largest driller in the Ohio Utica Shale (by the number of wells drilled), reported its first quarter 2024 numbers earlier this week. The company drills Utica *and* Marcellus wells in Ohio. It also has an active drilling program in the Oklahoma SCOOP shale play. Gulfport’s net daily production for 1Q24 averaged 1,053.7…
Read More...Encino Energy published its annual Community Progress Report for 2023 yesterday. The report provides insight into the company’s achievements through its Community Partnership Program and highlights its investments in the communities in which it operates. In five years of active operations in Ohio, Encino has donated more than $2 million to 145 community groups and…
Read More...Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the seemingly moribund effort to drill shale wells on land located in Ohio’s Wayne National Forest (WNF) is active once again. WNF is a patchwork of public and private mineral rights that covers over a quarter million acres of Appalachian foothills of southeastern Ohio. For years, the Bureau…
Read More...According to the data geeks at the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), U.S. natural gas production grew by 4% in 2023, which was similar to the growth in 2022. U.S. gas production in 2023 averaged a whopping 125.0 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day). In 2023, more natural gas was produced in the Appalachia (Marcellus/Utica)…
Read More...EOG Resources, one of the largest oil and gas drillers in the U.S. (with international operations in Trinidad and China), owns a huge 430,000+ acres of leases in the Ohio Utica. EOG calls its position the “Ohio Utica combo play” and now considers it one of the company’s “premium plays.” EOG concentrates on oil drilling…
Read More...Sometimes, we get a miracle. A liberal Democrat judge from Franklin County, OH, ruled on Friday that anti-fossil fuel fanatics don’t have the right to appeal a decision by the Ohio Oil & Gas Land Management Commission (OGLMC) to meet and award contracts to drill under (not on) several Ohio state parks, including the 20,000-acre…
Read More...According to Reuters, oilfield service companies and drillers have put the brakes on hiring and “further job cuts could loom” as natural gas producers respond to sliding prices by slashing spending on new wells to reduce excess production. We told you yesterday that Chesapeake Energy announced a coming rig and frac crew cut in the…
Read More...The money behind Big Green never stops. Where in the heck do they get it all? In November 2023, the Ohio Oil & Gas Land Management Commission (OGLMC) met in a public forum and voted to allow shale drilling under (not on top of) three different state-owned tracts of land: all 20,000 acres of Salt…
Read More...The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has an excellent article reporting on an effort by Tenaska, one of the largest privately operated companies in the U.S., to build a carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) hub spanning tens of thousands of acres in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. Landmen are “knocking on doors again” in all three states, looking…
Read More...Anti-fossil fuel zealots (climate catastrophists) have set their sights on blocking drilling and fracking under (not on top of) Ohio’s state-owned land, including several state parks. Their favorite tactic is to lie and smear the companies that seek to do such drilling. One tiny problem (for the zealots): they don’t know which companies are bidding…
Read More...Peregrine Energy Partners, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, continues a program to buy royalty rights in the Marcellus/Utica and elsewhere. We have chronicled a number of Peregrine’s M-U purchases since 2019 (see our Peregrine stories here). Two years ago, Peregrine acquired one of its largest royalty positions in the Utica, spanning over 340,000 gross acres in…
Read More...There are federal lands in the Marcellus/Utica. Did you know that? The Wayne National Forest (WNF) is a patchwork of public and private mineral rights that covers over a quarter million acres of Appalachian foothills of southeastern Ohio. For years, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) blocked new permits and drilling in WNF. During the…
Read More...Anti-fossil fuel fanatics in Ohio (and beyond) still can’t accept that they lost a battle to block drilling under (not on) Ohio state-owned land, including some Ohio state parks. In November, the Ohio Oil & Gas Land Management Commission (OGLMC) met in a public forum and voted to allow shale drilling under three state-owned tracts…
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