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Shale Permits Fall to 4 Last Week; Ohio Posts a Big Fat Zero
The Marcellus/Utica region received a paltry 4 new shale well permits last week, Oct. 26 – Nov. 1, down 5 from the anemic 9 the week before. Pennsylvania issued 2 new permits, Ohio issued none, and West Virginia issued 2. The drillers who received new-well permits last week were: CNX, EQT, and PennEnergy Resources. It was a sleepy week. Ohio didn’t issue a single horizontal shale permit of any kind: no new wells, no deepens, no location changes. Maybe somebody went on vacation at ODNR? The busier paperwork was on older permits: 11 modifications across PA and WV, eight of them for one EQT pad in Wetzel County. Read More “Shale Permits Fall to 4 Last Week; Ohio Posts a Big Fat Zero”
Time for another check of what our Marcellus/Utica (M-U) molecules are selling for, and the news is about what you’d expect after weeks of mild fall weather: not much. On Wednesday, the Henry Hub spot price (the national benchmark in Louisiana) averaged $2.610 per MMBtu (million British thermal units, roughly 1,000 cubic feet of gas). Here in the Northeast, gas for Thursday delivery sold for about a dollar. Mid-Atlantic gas (Texas Eastern M-3) went for $1.06, New York City (Transco Zone 6 NY) for $1.03, and New England (Algonquin Citygate) for $1.31. On Thursday, Texas Eastern M-2, the main pricing point for gas produced in southwestern PA, West Virginia, and Ohio, ticked up 5 cents to $1.100. That’s still less than half the Henry Hub price. A new NGI analysis explains why: heating demand in the East is running way behind last year, so the region has more gas than it needs. Even Canada has quit sending us much gas. 
Gulfport Energy, one of the largest drillers in the Ohio Utica, issued its third-quarter 2026 update this week, and it was a solid one. Total production averaged 1,057.2 MMcfe/d (million cubic feet equivalent per day), up about 10% from the second quarter, while liquids production (oil, condensate and NGLs) jumped 67% to 23.5 Mbbl/d (thousand barrels per day). But the bigger news is where CEO Nick Dell’Osso, now five months into the job after being shown the door at Expand Energy, is steering the company: a continuous two-rig drilling program in Ohio starting in 2027, an electric frac fleet, less spending in Oklahoma, another premium-priced gas sales deal into the Midwest, and a fatter $2.0 billion stock buyback authorization. 
Enverus Intelligence Research (EIR) just released its quarterly scorecard on oil and gas mergers and acquisitions (M&A), and the Marcellus/Utica is all over it. U.S. upstream deals (buying and selling wells, acreage, and whole drilling companies) totaled $12.6 billion in the third quarter, and October added another $18 billion, led by EQT’s $13.8 billion takeover of Range Resources. That pushes 2026’s total to $80.5 billion, and the year still has two months to go. That’s already more than all of 2025. The part that should get our readers’ attention is Enverus’s prediction that the Utica is the most likely place for the next big gas merger. 
National Fuel Gas Company (NFG), the Buffalo-based utility, pipeline and drilling company that plans to spin off its Seneca Resources drilling subsidiary as a separate public company in the second half of 2027, issued its fiscal fourth-quarter (Jul-Sep) and full-year 2026 update this week. (NFG’s fiscal year runs Oct. 1 to Sept. 30.) The parent company had a very good year, with adjusted earnings up 9%. Seneca, not so much. Seneca’s production dropped 7% in the quarter to 104 Bcf (about 1.13 Bcf/d). Full-year output of 419.5 Bcf came in below even the lowered guidance, and Seneca expects fiscal 2027 production to be roughly flat. Management blamed three things: a dud Marcellus pad in Lycoming County, so-so Upper Utica results, and “frac interactions” (better known as frac hits) between Lower Utica wells in Tioga County. The good news is that Seneca thinks it knows what went wrong, and it expects growth to resume in fiscal 2028. 
PJM Interconnection, which runs the power grid for 67 million people in 13 states (including PA, OH and WV) and D.C., issued its winter outlook yesterday. The short version: the lights should stay on this winter, even though PJM expects demand to set a new winter record. But a slide deck PJM presented to its Operating Committee the same day shows how thin the cushion gets if the wind stops blowing and a big gas supply problem hits at the same time. And it shows, once again, which fuel carries the load: natural gas. 
BKV Corporation, the Denver-based driller that got its start buying up Marcellus wells in northeastern Pennsylvania a decade ago, issued its third-quarter 2026 update yesterday. The headlines were all about Texas: a cost reimbursement deal with an unnamed “Leading Frontier AI Lab” to double planned gas-fired generation at its Temple power complex, and a first-ever Verra carbon credit certification. The Marcellus didn’t get a single mention in the press release or on the earnings call. But BKV’s CEO did hint, again, that the company is open to selling upstream assets to help pay for its power ambitions. If you’re a NEPA landowner leased with BKV, or you gather, move, or service its gas, read on. 
Diversified Energy Company (DEC), the Birmingham, Alabama-based company that built its business by buying up older, lower-producing wells other drillers no longer wanted (many of them conventional wells across Appalachia), released its third-quarter 2026 update this week. On paper, DEC lost $202.2 million in 3Q. In the real world, it threw off $152.7 million in adjusted free cash flow. The gap between the two numbers is hedging. But the bigger story is where DEC is headed. The company that calls itself the largest well owner in the Lower 48 is about to close the biggest deal in its history, and it’s for Permian oil, not Appalachian gas. Oh, and DEC is now drilling its own new shale wells. Just not here. 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Data center disgust played significant role in PA state Senate flip, winners say; Radical transparency at three – more than 1.25 million data points and still growing; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Texas oil industry becoming ’Californicated’ is ‘worst thing’ for US economy; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas futures slip as storage continues to build; Rigzone talks to the ‘disruption wing’ of the USA DOE; Oil sector girds for possible windfall tax; Refineries have shifted production away from gasoline to middle distillates; Trump’s energy deals are about to face a wave of investigations by Democrats; What a changing Congress means for the midstream industry; INTERNATIONAL: Oil rebounds after sharp Iran war selloff.