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16 New Shale Well Permits Reported for PA-OH-WV Sep 21 – 27
The Marcellus/Utica region received 16 new drilling permits last week, September 21 – 27, down 1 from the 17 permits issued two weeks ago. Pennsylvania issued 6 of the new permits. Ohio also issued 1 new permit. And West Virginia issued 9 new permits. The drillers who received new permits last week were: Antero Resources, Ascent Resources, Beech Resources, Expand Energy, and Range Resources. Read More “16 New Shale Well Permits Reported for PA-OH-WV Sep 21 – 27”
Sunday (two weeks ago) was a two-for-one day on television for anyone following the data center fight. CBS’s 60 Minutes ran a 13-minute segment from Texas showing just how furious rural Americans have become about the AI buildout landing in their backyards. Hours earlier on Fox & Friends Weekend, Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy laid out a plan that, frankly, answers nearly every complaint 60 Minutes aired. Watch them back-to-back (both are embedded below), and you get the problem and the solution in about 25 minutes. 
For our final 
Every so often the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) publishes something that deserves to be printed out and taped to the wall. This is one of those. To mark America’s 250th, EIA charted the entire history of U.S. energy consumption — from 1776 firewood to 2025 shale gas — and two Pennsylvania milestones show up along the way: Edwin Drake’s first commercial oil well at Titusville in 1859, and the nation’s first full-scale commercial nuclear plant, which came online in the Keystone State in 1957. 
This July was the hottest July on record for the Lower 48 states, averaging 77°F. You’d think a heat wave like that, with everybody cranking up the A/C, would send natural gas prices soaring. Nope. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports the Henry Hub spot price averaged $2.93 per MMBtu (million British thermal units, roughly 1,000 cubic feet of gas) from June through August, 6% less than the same period last summer. EIA credits (or blames, depending on your point of view) record gas production, full storage caverns, LNG export plant maintenance, and more solar and wind generation. That’s the national story. Here in Marcellus/Utica country, the story is the same, only more so. Our local prices ran far below Henry Hub all summer. 
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore took the podium in Annapolis last week and did something that disappointed just about everybody: he did NOT slap a moratorium on new data centers. Instead, he signed an executive order (EO) that creates a new state task force to grade data center projects, a public “dashboard” to track them, and a ban on secret deals between state agencies and developers. He also wants lawmakers to kill a 2020 sales tax break for data centers. The antis at Food & Water Watch (FWW) are grumbling that it’s not enough. What they REALLY want to kill is the gas-fired power plants that would keep the lights on. 
Susan Vessels, the Republican (we use that term loosely) president of Marietta, OH City Council, has endorsed Democrat Amy Acton for governor of Ohio. Why? Because Acton promised to honor Marietta’s call for a three-year moratorium on new wastewater injection wells. Vessels is so fixated on blocking injection wells that she’s willing to hand the governor’s office — and control of the agency that regulates Ohio’s oil and gas industry — to the woman who, as Ohio’s health director in 2020, signed the order that shut down the state. That’s not a Republican. That’s a RINO (Republican In Name Only). 
The highly functional and responsible Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC), unlike its dysfunctional and irresponsible counterpart, the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), continues to support the shale energy industry by approving water withdrawals and consumptive use requests for responsible, safe shale drilling. The SRBC published a notice in the September 26th Pennsylvania Bulletin that the SRBC approved and/or renewed 35 general water use permits in August for individual shale gas well drilling pads in Bradford, Clinton, Elk, Lycoming, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Tioga, and Wyoming counties. 
New Jersey regulators have fined the company building a giant AI data center in Vineland (Cumberland County, South Jersey) $1.07 million for installing and running 62 large natural gas-fired generators without air permits. The NJ Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) calls it “by far the largest” enforcement action ever taken against a data center in the Garden State, and “possibly one of the largest such actions in the nation.” Our math: those 62 engines add up to nearly 123 megawatts (MW) of gas-fired power, running behind the meter at a site that is supposed to become a 300 MW data center serving Nebius and, through Nebius, Microsoft. The developer, DataOne, says the engines are temporary until Bloom Energy fuel cells (which also run on natural gas) take over, and it will now apply for permits. 
Kimmeridge, the so-called “activist investor” that spent the past year leaning on Coterra Energy (and then Devon Energy) to dump its northeast Pennsylvania Marcellus assets, has just published a sequel to its 2024 “Shale’s Golden Years” white paper. The new paper, “Shale’s Golden Years, Part II: The Cost of Aging,” comes to a conclusion that should make Marcellus/Utica drillers (and landowners) smile: The oil side of shale is aging badly, while the natural gas side remains healthy, abundant, and capital-efficient. The rub? Kimmeridge says gas is so abundant that gas drillers need to move “downstream” to squeeze more value out of each molecule than Henry Hub will pay. 
CNX Resources has decided to walk straight into the anti-drilling movement’s favorite scare story. Two weeks ago, the Pittsburgh driller announced it will bolt continuous, real-time radiation monitoring onto its Radical Transparency program — the first-in-the-nation public-private data deal it signed with PA Gov. Josh Shapiro and the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) in November 2023. Ambient gamma radiation detectors will run around the clock at unconventional well pads and certain produced water facilities, with the raw numbers going to CNX, DEP, and the public at the same time. CNX will also start publishing the radiation surveys it already runs on every truckload of waste leaving its sites. None of this is required by law. That’s the whole point. 
How long does it take a rig hand to pull on coveralls, lace up steel-toed boots, and grab a hard hat? According to Precision Drilling’s own expert, about 2.6 to 4.1 minutes per shift. According to the workers’ lawyers, a lot longer. After 15 years, two trips to the Third Circuit and one to the U.S. Supreme Court, the two sides have split the difference, and it will cost Precision $1.9 million. On Monday (Sept. 22), both sides filed a joint brief in Williamsport federal court asking Judge Matthew Brann to approve the deal. It covers 1,006 hourly rig workers, some of whom worked Precision rigs right here in the Marcellus. The dollars are small. The legal rule the case left behind for Pennsylvania is not. 
Last month we told you DTE Energy was about to ask Michigan regulators for permission to build two new natural gas-fired power plants totaling 2,100 megawatts (MW) (see