CNX: Buys Back $199M of Stock, Drills Near-4-Mile Marcellus Laterals
CNX Resources posted its second quarter 2026 results last Thursday, and the numbers tell two stories at once. On the drilling side, CNX is running lean — just 2 wells drilled all quarter. On the financial side, the company spent more buying back its own stock ($199 million) than it spent drilling and completing wells. When a producer would rather buy its own shares than drill, that says something about where gas prices sit right now — and where management thinks they’re headed. Read More “CNX: Buys Back $199M of Stock, Drills Near-4-Mile Marcellus Laterals”
Enbridge reported second quarter results on Friday, July 31, and buried in a Canadian midstream giant’s quarterly slide deck — a document that is 90% oil sands, Permian, and balance sheet talk — is the best piece of news Appalachian producers have gotten out of New England in fifteen years. Project Beacon, Enbridge’s proposed expansion of the Algonquin Gas Transmission (AGT) system into New England, ran a binding open season from May 18 to July 1. An open season is simply a pipeline asking shippers to raise their hands and commit, in writing, to buy capacity. CEO Greg Ebel told analysts the response “significantly exceeded our initial expectations.” Matthew Akman, who runs Enbridge’s gas transmission business, said Beacon would be “multiple times” the size of the AGT Enhancement project already underway, and that a big enough Beacon could save New England utility customers more than $1 billion a year. 
TC Energy issued its second quarter 2026 update on July 30, and the headline numbers were strong: comparable EBITDA of C$2.9 billion, up 12% over 2Q25, and full-year guidance now tracking the upper end of the C$11.6–$11.8 billion range. Nice, but that’s investor stuff. The news that matters for Marcellus/Utica landowners, drillers, and midstreamers is sitting in the project tables — and in a demand forecast TC has now raised two years running. 
Dominion Energy reported second-quarter 2026 results on July 31, and while Wall Street focused on the penny-counting, there were three items in the release and on the analyst call that matter to Marcellus/Utica producers, midstreamers, and landowners: two new gas-fired power plants moving into permitting, a merger timeline that’s now locked in at the state level, and a nine-figure write-off on renewable assets that tells you which way the wind is actually blowing. 
Every so often the antis tell you exactly what they’re up to, and you just have to sit back and enjoy it. On Saturday, Inside Climate News ran a story on the ongoing campaign by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP), Clean Air Council, and their friends to jack up setbacks — the required distance between a well pad and the nearest building — from the current 500 feet to distances that would end new shale drilling in Pennsylvania. The new twist? They’ve hitched the campaign to the data center boom. More data centers means more gas, and more gas means (in their telling) more danger, so hurry up and pass the rules. It’s the same petition MDN has been tracking since 2024, dressed in a 2026 outfit. 
Let’s be honest — corporate “sustainability reports” are usually 100+ pages of stock photography, buzzwords, and pie charts about employee engagement. We normally give them a wide berth. But Williams released its 2025 Sustainability Report on July 29, and this one is different. Underneath the ESG wrapping paper is a straight-up growth story, and a surprising amount of it runs directly through the Marcellus and Utica. If you’re a landowner in Licking County, a driller in the Utica dry gas window, or anyone who owns WMB shares, there’s real news here. 
Something of an upset last week for rigs operating in the Marcellus/Utica region. We maintained the same cumulative count of 36 last week, which has been at that level for 12 weeks in a row. However, Ohio lost one rig in the Utica (now operating 10 rigs), while West Virginia gained that lost rig in the Marcellus (now operating 9 rigs). Pennsylvania maintained its rig count of 17. The national count increased by 1 to 588, which ties with a few weeks ago to be the highest national rig count in more than a year. 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: PA farmers group seeks data center halt, cites eminent domain; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Atlas Energy taps Kodiak for driverless oilfield trucking; Judge casts doubt on New York’s polluter pays climate law; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas futures settle modestly lower; Anti-data-center hysteria echoes decades of failed green predictions; INTERNATIONAL: Brent caps strongest month since March; LNG tanker carrying Qatari cargo struck in Strait of Hormuz.