It’s Official: Devon Keeping NEPA Marcellus, Won’t Sell (For Now)
After six months of will-they-or-won’t-they, we finally have an answer. Devon Energy is keeping its northeast Pennsylvania Marcellus assets, the old Cabot Oil & Gas (later Coterra) position centered on Susquehanna County. Devon wrapped up its post-merger “portfolio review” with its third-quarter 2026 update on Thursday. The only asset going out the door is the Eagle Ford in South Texas, which is being sold to Crescent Energy for $4.2 billion (see Devon Energy Sells Eagle Ford for $4.2B: Is the Marcellus Next?). The Marcellus, along with the Anadarko and the Rockies, now gets the label “complementary asset.” Activist hedge fund TOMS Capital says it is “profoundly disappointed” and still wants Devon to sell the whole company. So is this story over? Not quite. Read More “It’s Official: Devon Keeping NEPA Marcellus, Won’t Sell (For Now)”
When EQT announced on Oct. 26 that it would buy Range Resources (see 
Last week we told you storm clouds were gathering over the Marcellus now that Democrats control all three levers of state government in Harrisburg (see 
Back in May, we told you that FTAI Infrastructure agreed to sell Long Ridge Energy & Power, the 505-megawatt (MW) natural gas-fired power plant and 1,600-acre former Ormet aluminum smelter site in Hannibal (Monroe County), Ohio, to bitcoin miner-turned-AI data center developer MARA Holdings for $1.52 billion (see 
TC Energy, the Canadian pipeline giant that owns Columbia Gas Transmission (the No. 1 pipeline operator in Appalachia, by its own count), released its third-quarter 2026 results last Thursday. The big news for our region: TC approved a US$1.8 billion expansion of its Crossroads pipeline, designed in part to carry Marcellus/Utica gas west to the Midwest. CEO François Poirier said Crossroads and the Appalachia Supply Project (approved in April) amount to “two major arteries of egress out of the Appalachian Basin.” TC also told analysts it expects Appalachian gas production to grow by another 10 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day) by 2035. Music to our ears! 
EOG Resources, the Houston-based giant that bought Encino Energy’s Ohio Utica empire in August 2025 for $5.6 billion, issued its third-quarter update last week. Company-wide, it was a record quarter for oil, NGL, and natural gas production. For the Utica, the headline is speed and cost: EOG says it’s drilling faster, fracking faster, and spending 20% less per foot than Encino did. The company will also open its own in-basin Ohio sand mine before the end of this year, saving more than $300,000 per well. And yes, EOG is talking to data centers about Utica gas. 
Four years after Shell’s Beaver County ethane cracker started up, it’s about to get a permanent air permit. In Saturday’s Pennsylvania Bulletin, DEP announced it intends to issue the plant’s first Title V operating permit. Until now, the $14 billion complex has run on a string of temporary permits that DEP kept extending. The public can comment until January 19, with a meeting on December 17 and a hearing on January 7. Expect the usual suspects to show up. Expect plenty of union hard hats too. 
Ten weeks. Still 33. The Marcellus/Utica held at 33 rigs for the week ended November 6, a tenth straight week at the same number. The national count finally broke its four-week stay at 603, edging up one to 604, a new 52-week high. Oil rigs added one and gas rigs added one. Frac spreads climbed by four, ending a three-week slide. On the price board, it was a tale of two commodities: WTI fell 12.76% for the week, back down to $90.83 a barrel, while December natural gas rose 10 cents to $2.998 per MMBtu, a whisker under $3. Plus: Devon drops off the Enverus permit list after four weeks at nine, Range Resources’ permits fall back to earth, and EQT and EOG are now tied for the top spot on the rig list. 
Enbridge, the Canadian pipeline giant that owns Texas Eastern (TETCO), Algonquin Gas Transmission, half of the NEXUS Pipeline, and Ohio’s biggest gas utility, issued its third-quarter 2026 update on Friday. For the Marcellus/Utica, the big news is Project Beacon, the ~300 MMcf/d (million cubic feet per day) Algonquin expansion into New England. Enbridge says it expects to finalize customer contracts early in the new year. There’s also a rate deal for Enbridge Gas Ohio, a new TVA pipeline that ties into TETCO, and some diplomatic words about Ohio’s new governor from Enbridge’s incoming CEO. 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: State Sen. Gene Yaw expects to work with Democrat majority in new legislative year; Why $1 spot prices aren’t enough to rescue Appalachian natural gas markets; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: QatarEnergy in talks to secure up to 2 mtpa of LNG from NextDecade’s Texas project; Texas moratorium on data center grid connections disrupts U.S. project pipeline; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas futures settle higher; The green new caucus goes to Washington; How Democrats used the midterms to turn affordability concerns into ‘green populism’; Democrats promised affordability…Wall Street just got the bill; Big Oil sweats a blue setback on permitting; Anthropic strikes $3.4bn deal to generate gas-fired power for data centres; INTERNATIONAL: Oil posts biggest weekly drop since 2022; Oil market arrives at ‘remarkable destination’; A wave of new LNG supply will change who wins in gas; UN ‘biodiversity’ summit advances global control over land, money, & resources.