31 New Shale Well Permits Reported for PA-OH-WV Jun 15 – 21
The Marcellus/Utica region received 31 new drilling permits last week, June 15 – 21, up from the pathetic 2 permits issued two weeks ago. However, not all 31 permits reported last week were issued last week. Ohio, which is increasingly tardy in updating its public reports, included permits in last week’s report that should have been in the previous week’s. Last week, Pennsylvania issued 18 permits. Ohio issued 9 new permits, all of which should have been reported two weeks ago. West Virginia issued 4 new permits last week. The drillers who received new permits included: EOG Resources, EQT, Gulfport Energy, Infinity Natural Resources, JKLM Energy, LOLA Energy, Northeast Natural Energy, PennEnergy Resources, and Sabre Energy. Read More “31 New Shale Well Permits Reported for PA-OH-WV Jun 15 – 21”
In early May, Devon Energy completed its buyout of and merger with Coterra Energy, paying $21.4 billion in Devon stock (see 
The Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management Commission (OGLMC) is set to vote on Monday to open roughly 23,000 acres of publicly owned wildlife preserves in eastern Ohio to fracking. The panel will weigh accepting bids on about 15,000 acres split between Jockey Hollow and Egypt Valley, plus opening another 8,000 acres of Egypt Valley. Approval would bring Ohio’s leased public land to more than 30,000 acres across Salt Fork State Park and six wildlife areas, mostly in the Belmont-Harrison-Guernsey region. Ohio has already collected roughly $57 million in signing bonuses, plus 18–20% royalties. 
In October 2025, we reported that Ohio Republican Senators had introduced Senate Bill (SB) 219, the first significant update to Ohio’s oil and gas laws since the Kasich administration more than a decade ago (see 
In early 2024, we reported that Penn America Energy CEO Franc James, the potential builder of the proposed Penn America LNG export facility in the Philadelphia area, said that he “pumped the brakes” on the project but that it wasn’t dead yet (see 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Allegheny Township gets donation from CNX for police fleet; Northeast gas demand down as summer starts; Data center ‘pause button’ bill passes PA House nearly unanimously; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: New York’s Climate Act façade is crumbling; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas futures gain on warming weather outlook; Trump buys back four more offshore wind leases; INTERNATIONAL: Oil rebounds after Hormuz ship attack; UN climate bureaucrats hold another useless meeting; US threatens to cut gas supplies to EU amid row over environmental rules. 
This is a momentous occasion. Yesterday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a “Notice to Proceed with Construction” order authorizing Mountain Valley Pipeline (owned by EQT Corporation) to proceed with construction of MVP Southgate pipeline in North Carolina. This follows FERC granting permission to begin building Southgate in Virginia in April (see 
Last week, MDN told you about a group of landowners in Salem Township (Luzerne County), PA, near Wilkes-Barre, who had banded together to offer their land for sale to a data center project and potentially become very wealthy (see 
The thing about the political left is that they NEVER give up. EVER. And so, neither must we. The left wants to destroy new shale drilling in Pennsylvania. They couldn’t do it via regulation. They couldn’t convince a majority of residents that shale drilling is bad. So they search out other ways to make it happen. Among those ways are efforts to increase setbacks (distance from wells to homes and other structures) from the current 500 feet to over 3,200 feet, which would ban drilling in 95%+ of the state (see 
At the 2026 Unconventional Resources Technology Conference (URTeC) conference in Houston, Texas, experts debated whether U.S. shale has “peaked.” AllianceBernstein’s Bob Brackett noted that the sector has added 10 million bbl/d of oil since 2013, with Delaware Basin wells producing 300,000 bbl in two years, but flagged stalled productivity since 2021 and stubbornly low recovery factors (meaning less than 10% of the oil in the shale is actually recovered). Chevron’s Birlie Bourgeois called for a “next chapter” via AI, better fractures, and EOR surfactants, which have boosted productivity up to 20%. 
RBN Energy has published an excellent series of blog posts discussing pipeline projects under development within and beyond the Marcellus/Utica production area that, collectively, will enable at least a few more Bcf/d to reach customers in the Northeast, the Southeast, and the Midwest by 2030. Part 5 of RBN’s Northeast gas series (below) examines pipeline projects moving Appalachian Marcellus/Utica gas westward into Ohio, the Midwest, and to the Mid-South. 
Last week, MDN reported that the Energy Secretary of the very liberal Democrat regime that runs Massachusetts had written a letter to the New England Power Generators Association, asking power generators to get on board and support an expansion of the Algonquin Gas Transmission (AGT) pipeline (see