M-U Rigs Realign: PA Stays @ 20, OH Drops 2 @ 11, WV Adds 1 @ 8
Last week, the Marcellus/Utica saw a realignment in rig counts, at least in Ohio and West Virginia. Pennsylvania kept the 20 rigs it has had since early February. Ohio lost two rigs, from 13 to 11, the fewest active rigs in the Buckeye State since last September. And perhaps the biggest news was that West Virginia picked up one rig, from 7 to 8 rigs, for the first time since last May! Overall, the M-U region had a net loss of one rig last week, going from 40 to 39 active rigs. The M-U’s biggest competitor, the Haynesville, gained one rig, from 52 to 53 rigs, some 14 rigs more than the M-U. It wasn’t all that long ago that the M-U ran more rigs than the Haynesville. Read More “M-U Rigs Realign: PA Stays @ 20, OH Drops 2 @ 11, WV Adds 1 @ 8”
Ascent Resources, formerly American Energy Partners, was founded by Aubrey McClendon, a gas industry legend, and is a privately held company that focuses 100% on the Ohio Utica Shale. Ascent, headquartered in Oklahoma City, OK, is Ohio’s largest natural gas producer and one of the largest natural gas producers in the U.S. The company issued its fourth quarter and full-year 2025 update last week. The company plans to expand its 2026 drilling program, increasing land spending by 40% to nearly $225 million. The company aims to strengthen its long-term inventory and supply natural gas to power-hungry Appalachian data centers. 
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Similarly, if a pipeline being drilled loses 28,500 barrels (1.2 million gallons) of nontoxic drilling mud into an abandoned coal mine void, does it matter? The environmental left is attempting to make a big deal out of MarkWest Liberty Midstream’s drilling project in Washington County, PA, in which the company has, over a series of 19 different episodes, lost a cumulative 28,500 barrels of nontoxic bentonite drilling mud into an old coal mine void as it drilled the Chiarelli to Imperial Pipeline Project, between October 2025 and January 2026. Bentonite is the same stuff used to make kitty litter and toothpaste. 
Thanks to the work of David Hess at the PA Environment Digest Blog in tracking Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) notices published in the Pennsylvania Bulletin, we spotted three new water pipeline projects related to drilling new shale wells in three different northeastern PA counties: Lycoming, Bradford, and Wyoming. Water is used for fracking. New water pipelines mean new fracking is on the way in those locations. 
Just coming to light now, more than a month after it happened, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is investigating whether there is any connection between a low-level earthquake (“seismic event”) near Murrysville in Westmoreland County, PA, and the Penneco Environmental Solutions LLC Sedat 3A injection well in Plum Borough in Allegheny County. Operators of injection wells in PA are (usually) required to maintain on-site seismometers. On Feb. 7, the seismometer at the Penneco Sedat 3A site registered a “seismic event” about six miles away near Murrysville. 
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: An oil company quietly dug a surprisingly deep geothermal well; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas futures gain on global energy turmoil; Repeal of 2009 endangerment finding is major milestone in Clean Air Act history; The asymmetric advantages of environmentalist zealotry; Energy security matters now more than ever; INTERNATIONAL: Crude closes near $91 after historic rally; Analysts see ‘significant yet short lived’ oil price rallies; War sees energy exporters scramble for routes out of Gulf; European natural gas prices soar again; Qatar LNG outage erases 2026 supply surplus, Morgan Stanley says.