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35 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Jun 27-Jul 3
We’re catching up the permits issued report, but not for last week. This report is for permits issued two weeks ago–June 27 through July 3. The numbers increased from the prior week (27) to 35. Pennsylvania issued the lion’s share of new permits, 25, with most of them going to Olympus Energy (12 permits in Washington County), and a significant number going to a name we’ve only seen once before: Clean Energy Exploration & Production (six permits in Tioga County). Ohio issued four new permits, with three going to Ascent Resources and one to Gulfport Energy. Finally, West Virginia also issued four new shale permits, two each for Southwestern Energy and Tug Hill Operating.
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On May 24, Cleveland State University researchers quietly published the “Shale Investment Dashboard in Ohio Q1 and Q2 2021” (full copy below). The new report details shale-related investment in Ohio, looking at upstream, midstream, and downstream activities. The investment estimates are from January through June of 2021–the first half of last year. The report shows investment in the Ohio Utica continued to increase last year, during the height of the pandemic. It also shows just two companies drilled 73% of Ohio’s new shale wells and 69% of the money invested in drilling new shale wells in the Buckeye State in 1H21. Which two companies?
Ascent Resources, originally founded as American Energy Partners by gas legend Aubrey McClendon, is a privately-held company that focuses 100% on the Ohio Utica Shale. Ascent is Ohio’s largest natural gas producer and the 8th largest natural gas producer in the U.S. The company issued its first quarter update earlier this week. Ascent averaged production of 2.0 Bcfe/d for the quarter, a 9% increase over 1Q21. Nearly all of Ascent’s production (93%) was natural gas, while the rest was oil and NGLs. Ascent generated -$2 million of free cash flow (yes, negative free cash flow) and lost $1.5 billion during 1Q based on bad bets on derivatives/hedging.
We recently received a couple of recent issues of a monthly news/analysis newsletter from 
On Monday MDN brought you big news from Bloomberg that Gulfport Energy is in talks with Ascent Resources to merge (see