INR 3Q: Output Doubles, REX Pays Off, First Deep Utica Well Nears
Infinity Natural Resources (INR), the Morgantown, WV-based driller that focuses 100% on the Marcellus/Utica, released its third-quarter 2026 update on Monday (Nov. 9) and held its earnings call yesterday. The big number: record production of 431.7 MMcfe/d (million cubic feet equivalent per day), double what it was a year ago and up 23.9% from 2Q. But the more interesting news is in the details. INR just finished fracking its first deep dry gas Utica well in southwestern Pennsylvania; it’s squeezing better prices out of a pipeline contract it inherited from Antero; and it’s openly shopping for more acquisitions anywhere in PA, OH, or WV. Here’s what matters for each part of the MDN audience. Read More “INR 3Q: Output Doubles, REX Pays Off, First Deep Utica Well Nears”
One week after Ohio voters slammed the door on data centers in at least 14 towns, and after the Mahoning Valley swung back to the Democrats, 31 Valley businesses, unions, schools, and economic development groups stepped up to the microphone on Monday to say: not so fast. The new “Mahoning Valley Coalition for a 21st Century Economy,” started by the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber and the Western Reserve Building Trades, wants data centers built in Mahoning and Trumbull counties, done “responsibly.” Is our side finally waking up after getting its clock cleaned on Election Day? Maybe. And who’s carrying the message this time is the most interesting part of the story. 
Smart Sand (NASDAQ: SND), the Yardley, Pa.-based frac sand supplier that rails Northern White sand from Wisconsin and Illinois into the Marcellus and Utica, cooled off a bit in the third quarter after its record-setting 2Q. But tucked into the company’s new SEC 10-Q is a nugget northern-tier landowners and drillers will want to hear: in July, Smart Sand acquired the rights to operate a sand transloading terminal in Williamsport, Lycoming County, and expects to open it in 2027. That would be the company’s first company-controlled terminal serving the northeastern Marcellus. 
Back in July, we told you about Texas Eastern Transmission’s (TETCO) Athens Compressor Station in Athens County, Ohio, tripping offline with an “unplanned outage” — at the very same time TETCO was asking FERC for permission to rip out the station’s four aging turbines and replace them with two new ones (see 
Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) says it has “about 25” data center projects in some stage of permitting. DEP didn’t name them, so MDN went digging. Buried in the data behind DEP’s own 
Northern Oil and Gas (NOG) is a Minnesota company that owns interests in wells operated by other drillers. It released its third-quarter 2026 update last Thursday (Nov. 5). Most of it is the usual Permian and Bakken talk, but there’s good news for our region tucked inside. NOG’s Appalachian production set another record in Q3, averaging 42.7 Mboe/d (thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day). That’s just enough to slip past the Williston/Bakken (where NOG got its start!) and make the Marcellus/Utica (M-U) NOG’s #2 basin by volume, behind only the Permian. Appalachia now supplies more than half of all the natural gas NOG produces. The catch? Our gas still sells at a discount, and management is pitching the region as a steady, low-cost producer, not a growth engine. 
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is taking a second crack at rewriting Chapter 105, the state’s rules for anything built in, along, or across a stream or wetland. Those rules were last overhauled in 1991. On Nov. 4, DEP walked its Water Resources Advisory Committee (WRAC) through a 55-page draft of the new rules. Nothing in the draft targets shale drilling by name. But Chapter 105 is the permit every well pad access road, gathering line, and pipeline needs when it crosses a creek or wetland, so a lot of what’s in here lands right on the M-U industry. Consider this your heads-up: the time to get involved is now, while DEP is still asking for input, not after the text is locked in. 
On January 27, 2026, in the middle of Winter Storm Fern, natural gas delivered into New England sold for $122.58 per MMBtu. Down the road, gas delivered into New York City hit $142.72. Both markets sit a few hundred miles from the lowest-cost gas basin in North America (that would be us, the Marcellus/Utica). A new analysis from RBN Energy says these winter price blowouts happen nearly every year; they’re getting bigger, and the pipeline fixes now in the works are small and slow. With winter about to arrive, RBN sums it up as “same old song and dance.” 
Enbridge Gas North Carolina has picked its final route for the 28-mile, 12-inch natural gas pipeline it wants to build across Chatham County, NC, and it gives opponents some of what they asked for. Nearly half of the line (13 miles) will now run right next to existing power lines and highways instead of cutting new paths through woods and farms. The company filed the route on Friday, Oct. 30, with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the NC Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). We got our hands on the 183-page filing, and there’s a lot more in there than the headline. 
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Did Texas Republicans let wind & solar hobble the ERCOT grid?; Healey’s climate chief gives departing address, with future of the Cabinet role unclear; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas extends gains on coming cold spell; Energy humanism – practical environmentalism meets climate pragmatism; U.S. feed gas for LNG hits new record high; DOE closes $480 million loan to expand American energy production in Gulf; INTERNATIONAL: Oil prices retreat as peace hopes grow; Macron negotiates Hormuz insurance with Gulf states; Qatar LNG loadings gain pace; COP31 – buildings are the new climate cash sink; Climate voices see complications with blocking new oil and gas. 
Good news, for a change, out of Washington. Last night the U.S. Senate voted 73-25 to take up the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA, S. 5653), the permitting reform bill we’ve been tracking since September. It needed 60 votes and got 13 more than that. As we told you in our Oct. 29 countdown post, if the bill had failed this vote, it was dead for this Congress (see 
Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court spent an hour on Hoffmann v. WBI Energy Transmission. That’s the North Dakota case that will decide whether state law or federal law sets what a pipeline company owes a landowner when it takes an easement by eminent domain. If the questions from the bench are any guide (they usually are, but not always), the ranchers are in trouble. Justices on the left, the right, and in the middle took turns poking holes in the landowners’ argument. If WBI wins, Pennsylvania and Ohio landowners facing condemnation by interstate pipelines will lose the extra money state law now gives them, attorney fees included. 
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has finished looking into the teeny-tiny earthquake that hit near EQT’s Porter well pad in Allegheny Township (Westmoreland County) on Oct. 4. The verdict: no violation, no cause identified, and the pad keeps on working. When MDN told you about this “seismic event” last month, we pointedly did not jump to conclusions about whether the well caused it (see 
Week two of MDN’s weekly trip through the Pennsylvania Bulletin, and this one has a whale in it: Shell’s Beaver County cracker plant is finally getting its permanent air permit. The Nov. 7 edition (Vol. 56, No. 45) ran 184 pages. Beyond Shell, DEP signed off on three well pad air permits, four erosion permits, a pair of new gas pipelines in Tioga County, and three frac water recycling setups. A second gas-powered “compute center” also got its permit in Clearfield County. Here’s what matters to the shale crowd… 
Remember back in May 2025 when NRG Energy agreed to buy 18 natural gas-fired power plants (13 GW) from LS Power for about $12 billion, including five plants in Pennsylvania (see