Corrected: 25 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV May 2-8
We always wait a few days into a new week before grabbing new shale well permits data to give the folks at the various state agencies time to update their systems for the previous week. Last Wednesday we told you that Pennsylvania had issued 11 new permits, Ohio issued none, and West Virginia issued just one (see 12 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV May 2-8). In rechecking today, we discovered PA actually issued 13 new permits and OH issued 11 permits during that period (both states updated their data since last Wednesday). WV remained at one new permit. We include the revised and corrected reports below.
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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.
Last week Pennsylvania issued 16 new shale well permits. EQT led the way with ten permits, all of them for wells in Greene County. You just HAVE to read the names of the wells (below). After getting skunked for two weeks in a row, Ohio finally issued permits once again last week–ten of them. Ascent Resources scored six permits, mostly in Belmont County. Encino Energy had four permits, all in Carroll County. Finally, West Virginia had nine permits. Antero Resources scored seven of the nine (six in Wetzel County), and Southwestern took the remaining two permits (both in Marshall County).
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
Public company Gulfport Energy, the third-largest driller in the Ohio Utica Shale (by the number of wells drilled), emerged from bankruptcy less than a year ago, in May 2021, with a new board and new top management (see