PA-OH-WV Shale Permits Oct 12-18: 12 New Wells, 19 Older-Well Moves
The Marcellus/Utica region received 12 new shale well permits last week, October 12-18, up 3 from 9 the week before. Pennsylvania issued 9 of the new permits. Ohio issued 2. And West Virginia issued a single new permit. The drillers who received new-well permits last week were: Antero Resources, Ascent Resources, Expand Energy, Range Resources, and Seneca Resources. Before we go further, a quick housekeeping note: Starting this week, MDN counts only permits for brand-new wells in the headline number. State agencies also issue renewals (more time to drill a well that was already permitted), modifications (changes to a well that was already permitted, like a new wellbore path), and in Ohio, “deepen” permits. Those wells were already counted the first time around, so counting them again would double-count. We now list them separately, in their own section below. Read More “PA-OH-WV Shale Permits Oct 12-18: 12 New Wells, 19 Older-Well Moves”
Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh, just became the first county in the nation to force private employers to pay for 12 weeks of parental leave — at up to 100% of wages, with the employer footing the entire bill. County Executive Sara Innamorato signed the regulation yesterday, two days after County Council approved it 11-4. Here’s what caught our eye (thanks to a heads-up from PIOGA): the mandate doesn’t care where your headquarters is. If you’re a driller or service company with 15 or more employees anywhere, and one of your employees works 80 hours in Allegheny County in a year, that worker is covered. 
Another one bites the dust in northeastern Pennsylvania. On Wednesday night, Archbald Borough Council (Lackawanna County) voted 7-0 to deny a zoning request for the Wildcat Ridge Data Center Campus, a 14-building AI “hyperscale” project proposed for roughly 575 acres on the mountainside above Business Route 6. The campus would have needed 1.6 gigawatts (GW) of electricity, more than 3.3 million gallons of water per day in summer, and 588 diesel-powered backup generators. About 175-200 residents packed the borough building’s gym and erupted in cheers when the vote came down. The developer, Brooklyn-based Cornell Realty Management, isn’t talking, but just about everyone in the room expects an appeal to county court. Why should Marcellus folks care? Because 1.6 GW of new, around-the-clock electric demand is, in our neck of the woods, a gas demand story. 
Yesterday, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) threw another party, this time to celebrate the 500th orphan and abandoned well plugged since Josh Shapiro became governor in January 2023. Good for them. Seriously. But we can’t help noticing that Ohio plugged 480 orphan wells in 2025 alone, nearly as many as PA has plugged in almost four years. From 2023 through 2025, Ohio plugged 1,215 old wells. That’s 2.4 times PA’s entire Shapiro-era total, and it doesn’t count a single well Ohio has plugged so far in 2026. 
Here’s a sentence we never thought we’d write: Qatar is buying American LNG. Qatar sits on top of the world’s largest natural gas field and, until this year, was one of the two or three biggest LNG exporters on the planet. Yet this week Cheniere Energy announced two long-term deals to supply state-owned QatarEnergy with 4 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of LNG through 2054. Half of it will come from Cheniere’s Sabine Pass export plant in Louisiana. And Sabine Pass is a place where Marcellus/Utica gas has been showing up for years. Translation: some of the gas drilled in PA, OH, and WV will very likely end up owned by a Middle East country, which will resell it around the world. Who’d a thunk it? 
There’s a new sheriff in town. Well, technically a retired police chief. On Thursday evening (Oct. 22), more than 150 residents gathered in Penn Township, Westmoreland County, for the kickoff of the Citizens Energy Council (CEC), a grassroots group that supports natural gas drilling and openly pushes back against the anti-fossil fuel activists who have dominated township meetings in this part of Pennsylvania for more than a decade. CEC’s leader, former Penn Township Police Chief John Otto, summed up the group’s message in three words: “Enough is enough.” Music to our ears! 
Here’s a rare thing in Washington: a bill that passed both the House and Senate without a fight, helps drillers, and doesn’t cost taxpayers a dime. On Tuesday, President Trump signed the License to Drill Act into law. The new law keeps alive a 20-year-old program called the Permit Processing Improvement Fund (PPIF). Under the PPIF, drillers who want to drill on federal land pay a fee for each drilling permit application, and that money goes to pay the federal workers who process those permits. The program was set to expire on Sept. 30, but now runs through fiscal year 2037. Most of the action is out West. But with the first federal leases in Ohio’s Wayne National Forest in nearly a decade now in drillers’ hands, it matters a little bit here too. 
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: New Jersey’s RGGI leakage warning applies to New York too; A fuel cell energy project is in the works for Buchanan County; New York’s fracking ban leaves community to crumble while Pa. neighbors boom with gas millions; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas futures edge up after storage data; USA crude oil stocks drop 3MM barrels WoW; U.S. refineries have been running at very high rates in 2026; VettaFi sees 40% North American natural gas demand growth over next decade; INTERNATIONAL: Oil surges 4% after deadly Saudi attacks; Saudi Aramco evacuates HQ.