CNX Will Drill Near Wadestown, WV Through 2029; $525M in Royalties
CNX Resources isn’t going anywhere in north-central West Virginia. At a community event at the Blacksville Volunteer Fire Department social hall, CNX Chief Operating Officer Navneet Behl laid out a drilling calendar for the company’s Wadestown operation in western Monongalia County through 2029. CNX has 24 wells already producing on three pads there, is working on six more wells on those same pads, and is building a brand-new pad slated for 13 more wells. The company says it expects to pay about $525 million in royalties on those 19 new wells. That’s the good news. The not-so-good news came from the same guy: Behl admitted CNX can only drill so much in Appalachia because there still aren’t enough pipelines to haul the gas away. Read More “CNX Will Drill Near Wadestown, WV Through 2029; $525M in Royalties”
It took three years, two conditional use applications, one appellate court loss, a subdivision, a three-hour hearing, and a deadline extension — but EQT finally got its vote. On Monday night (Sept. 14), Elizabeth Township’s (Allegheny County, PA) Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to approve two conditional use permits for EQT’s six-well Heracles project: one for the well pad, and one for the interconnect pad (the spot where gas from the wells hands off to a pipeline). The pad sits less than a half-mile from Elizabeth Forward High School, so the approvals come with a long list of strings attached, including a 10-year “emergency preparedness fund” EQT must pay into. Big Green group Protect Elizabeth Township (PET) says it will keep fighting in court. In a surprise twist, the commission president revealed that someone has approached the township about building a data center. 
Texas is still the undisputed king of American natural gas — but Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio together produced almost as much gas in 2025 as Texas did all by itself. New EIA data confirms Appalachia is America’s second major shale gas hub, and it’s not particularly close behind. The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s annual gross withdrawals table shows the country produced 47.73 Tcf of natural gas in 2025 (gross withdrawals — the total wellhead volume before processing, as distinct from marketed or dry gas figures). Texas alone accounted for 13,603 Bcf, or 28.5% of the U.S. total — nearly double Pennsylvania’s 7,676 Bcf (16.1%). 
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) recently released second-quarter 2026 production numbers. The state’s top natural gas producer was Ascent Resources, with 220,554,117 Mcf (220.55 Bcf) produced during the quarter, averaging 2.42 Bcf/d. Ascent’s production accounted for 41% of the state’s natural gas production. The top oil producer in the state, by far, was EOG Resources, which reports under two names: EOG Ohio LLC (the old Encino Energy assets EOG bought last year) and EOG Resources Inc. Together, they produced 8,846,396 barrels of oil during the quarter, which works out to an average of 97,213 barrels per day. That’s 67% (two-thirds!) of Ohio’s entire oil production during 2Q26. 
The Ohio River Valley Institute (ORVI), the radical anti-fossil fuel outfit that wants to shut down Appalachian shale, is at it again. Today ORVI senior researcher Sean O’Leary published an op-ed in the Ohio Capital Journal claiming that shale’s importance to Ohio’s economy is “small and shrinking.” He lists seven “facts.” We checked every one of them against the same government data he cites. Some are technically true but badly misleading. At least one is flat wrong — by a factor of a million. Here’s what the data actually says. 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Contract for up to 45 CNG buses from Central Ohio Transit Authority; Pennsylvania has the energy…will regulation send investment elsewhere?; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Corpus Christi LNG expansion makes facility the second-largest in the United States; Superior officers find graffiti after fire at Enbridge, Inc. building; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas futures settle moderately higher; What the data center revolt is really about; CO2 enrichment ahead – de-decarbonization; U.S. LNG terminals increase toward winter levels; Artificial Intelligence is artificial when Washington tries to write technology regulation; INTERNATIONAL: Oil jumps on Saudi and Libya outages.