Deep Utica Well Still Flowing 42 MMcf/d After 10 Months
The operator roundtable at THE SUMMIT: Appalachia on July 28 put three very different companies on the same stage — EQT, the biggest gas producer in the country; PennEnergy Resources, a private driller running three-quarters of a Bcf/d north of Pittsburgh; and Huntley & Huntley, an Armstrong County outfit that’s been at this since 1912. What came out of it was the most technically useful hour of the day: hard numbers on deep Utica well performance, a clear-eyed look at stacking the Upper Devonian, and a warning about who the antis are coming for next. MDN was an advertising partner for the event and obtained the transcripts with the organizer’s permission. This is the third of four articles chronicling the event. Yesterday we brought you EQT’s correction of the record (see EQT Exec Corrects the Record: We Never Said 100 Bcf/d of Demand). On Monday, we brought you comments made by former Senator Joe Manchin (see Manchin Tells Pittsburgh Crowd He Wrote the IRA in Secret). Tomorrow, our final installment will share with you which state mineral buyers say is “easy pickings.” Don’t miss it! Read More “Deep Utica Well Still Flowing 42 MMcf/d After 10 Months”
Infinity Natural Resources (INR), the Morgantown, WV-based pureplay Marcellus/Utica driller, dropped its second quarter 2026 numbers on Monday and walked analysts through them Tuesday morning. The short version: production jumped 75% year over year to 348.5 million cubic feet equivalent per day (MMcfe/d), adjusted EBITDAX hit a company-record $114.7 million, the first wells from the Ohio Utica package INR bought from Antero came online ahead of plan — and INR quietly drilled and cored its first deep dry gas Utica well in Pennsylvania. Full-year guidance was reaffirmed. Not a bad quarter for a company that was still private 18 months ago. 
Babcock & Wilcox — the 159-year-old boiler maker headquartered in Akron, Ohio — announced yesterday that it signed an agreement with Siemens Energy to start work on 20 steam turbine generator sets totaling 1 gigawatt (GW) of capacity for gas-fired data center projects. Here’s the part that caught our eye: B&W hasn’t announced signed customers for all of them. The company is buying the factory slots first and lining up buyers second. That’s a real bet on gas-fired power demand — and it’s being made by a company sitting right on top of the Utica. 
A Nasdaq-listed company you’ve almost certainly never heard of says it has signed a binding term sheet to buy roughly 1,800 acres of unleased Marcellus mineral rights in “northern Pennsylvania,” drill a dozen wells on it, burn the gas in on-site turbines, and run a 200-megawatt AI data center behind the meter — with a stretch goal of 1 gigawatt. The company, Alpha Compute Corp. (Nasdaq: ALP), never says which county. We think we’ve figured it out: Tioga County. Here’s what’s actually known, what we deduced, and what nobody should be printing as fact yet. 
America’s biggest LNG exporter just had a monster quarter — and raised its full-year forecast for the second time this year. Cheniere Energy (NYSE: LNG) shipped 184 cargoes in the second quarter and is now building toward a platform that could eventually swallow more than 10 billion cubic feet of gas a day. Appalachian producers should be paying attention. Cheniere Energy reported second quarter 2026 results on Aug. 6, and the numbers were eye-popping. Revenues hit $5.73 billion, up 24% from a year ago. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA came in at $1.80 billion, up 27%. Net income was $3.07 billion, up 89% — though a big chunk of that is non-cash accounting noise we’ll get to in a minute. 
Devon Energy and Williams spent the last week of July doing something that doesn’t show up on a reserve report: teaching northeastern Pennsylvania teenagers how the gas business actually works. Then, on July 30, the Pennsylvania Chamber Foundation named both companies “Greatest Places to Intern in PA.” Six days later, Devon CEO Clay Gaspar told analysts he’s fielding “no shortage of incoming phone calls” about which assets he might sell — with the Marcellus at the top of everybody’s list. Which raises a question nobody on Wall Street is asking: who inherits the workforce machine? 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Southwestern Pennsylvania officials visit ‘Data Center Alley’ amid local development boom; Re-assessing RPS critical to address energy affordability challenges; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Data-center backlash leads to new land rush in Texas oil patch; Court orders pause Mass. data center expansion; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas futures give back some gains; Trump extends narrowed waiver of Jones Act shipping mandates; Back to school hits the gas; Senators outline future of permitting talks; INTERNATIONAL: Oil extends gains on Hormuz uncertainty; A dozen ships switch oil outside Hormuz; US shale expertise puts Australia’s Beetaloo on the map; AI will boost oil and gas production more than green energy, report finds; Mexico won’t frac all their basins, yet they keep importing U.S. gas; Is Europe on the brink of another natural gas crisis?