Devon Exec Shuffle: The Man Who Knew the Marcellus Is Out
Devon Energy quietly reshuffled its top exploration and production (E&P) leadership last week, and buried in a bare-bones SEC filing is a detail that matters to landowners in Susquehanna and Wyoming counties: the one senior executive who actually knew the Marcellus is walking out the door on Sept. 1. Devon filed a Form 8-K on Aug. 20 (embedded below) announcing three appointments and two departures. No press release. No quotes from CEO Clay Gaspar. No thank-yous for two decades of service. Just a two-page filing signed by the general counsel, dropped on a Thursday afternoon. Several trade outlets reprinted the filing more or less word for word. Nobody asked who these people are or where they came from. So we did. Read More “Devon Exec Shuffle: The Man Who Knew the Marcellus Is Out”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit last Friday slammed the door on Big Green’s attempt to yank the New York water permit for the Williams/Transco Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline. Six environmental groups asked the court to vacate the Clean Water Act Section 401 water quality certification (WQC) that the New York State Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) issued in November 2025. In a summary order issued Aug. 21, a three-judge panel said no. The permit stands. NESE, already under construction, keeps building. 
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 August 22nd Pennsylvania Bulletin that the SRBC approved and/or renewed 35 general water use permits in July for individual shale gas well drilling pads in Bradford, Centre, Clearfield, Clinton, Lycoming, Susquehanna, Tioga, and Wyoming counties. 
PJM Interconnection — the grid operator that keeps the lights on for 67 million people across 13 states and DC, including most of the Marcellus/Utica region — dropped its new five-year strategy last Wednesday (Aug. 19). Most of the coverage focused on the four bullet-point priorities, which read like every corporate strategy document ever written. But if you skip to page 5, PJM says two things out loud that our industry has been shouting for a decade: pipeline constraints are choking the grid, and the grid is getting less reliable as it gets more intermittent. 
Three weeks, same number. The Marcellus/Utica held at 35 rigs again last week — Pennsylvania 16, Ohio 10, West Virginia 9, nobody budging. This time we had company: the national count fell five to 588, the first decline in four weeks. And the Haynesville, which has been eating our lunch all summer, gave back two rigs. The bigger story, though, is happening after the drilling stops. Frac crews nationally dropped by nine in a single week. 
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