Ohio Utica 1Q24 Numbers – Encino Dominates with 51% of Oil Prod.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) released production numbers for the first quarter 2024 yesterday. Oil production, led by Encino Energy wells, is the headline news. Oil production from Encino represented 51.3% of all Ohio Utica oil production in 1Q. Ascent Resources was the next closest oil producer, with 21.8% of Utica oil produced. As for natural gas, Ascent Resources dominated with 42.8% of all Ohio Utica natgas production. In the number two slot was Gulfport Energy with 17.6% of natgas production, followed closely by Encino with 16.0% of natgas production. Below, we have lists of the top 25 gas and oil wells by production in 1Q24, along with charts showing gas and oil production by both drillers and by county. You’ll only find this news (and this level of detail) here on MDN.
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Two weeks ago, 16 new permits were issued to drill in the Marcellus/Utica region. Last week, May 20-26, the number increased by two to 18. Two drillers tied for the top prize for most new permits. Chesapeake Energy received five new permits, all of them for drilling in Sullivan County, PA. Ascent Resources also received five new permits, with four of them to drill in Jefferson County, OH, and one in Guernsey County, OH. Antero received three permits for drilling in Wetzel County, WV. EQT Corporation got two permits to drill in Washington County, PA. Range Resources, Olympus Energy, and INR each got a single new permit (see below for where).
Back in the summer of 2020, MDN told you about a lawsuit brought by an Ohio rights owner called TERA, an organization that owns the royalty rights for a number of leases with wells in Belmont County, OH, drilled by different producers, suing the producers for drilling into the Point Pleasant shale layer when the lease only mentions the Utica layer (see 
Ascent Resources, founded as American Energy Partners by gas legend Aubrey McClendon, is a privately held company focusing 100% on the Ohio Utica Shale. Ascent, headquartered in Oklahoma City, OK, is Ohio’s largest natural gas producer and the 8th largest natural gas producer in the U.S. The company issued its first quarter 2024 update yesterday. The company boasts that 70% of the Ohio Utica’s top 40 wells (by production, converted to equivalents) were drilled by Ascent. A statement by CEO Jeff Fisher in the update says the company remains focused on “costs, efficiencies and margins” in 2024 in order to drive free cash flow.
A royalty case that took nearly four years and hundreds of filings by both sides was finally decided by an Ohio jury in March (see 
The Ohio Oil & Gas Association (OOGA) held its annual meeting in March at the Hilton in Columbus, OH. While MDN was not there, an industry friend sent along a copy of the slide deck used by the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) Division of Oil & Gas Resources Management. The ODNR’s “regulatory update” addressed a number of interesting issues, including the state’s ongoing application for “primacy” in permitting carbon dioxide injection wells, permitting and unitization (forced pooling), updates on rule changes for drilling and fracking, and several “top 5” lists for natural gas and oil producers in the Utica Shale.
Oil production in the Ohio Utica hit a record 27.8 million barrels in 2023, up 41% from 2022, according to researchers at the Levin College of Public Affairs and Education at Cleveland State University. In December, eastern Ohio oil wells pumped 93,000 barrels of crude, up one-third from December 2022, according to federal data. Oil has been locked away in the Utica/Point Pleasant shale layer for millennia. Aubrey McClendon, co-founder and former CEO of Chesapeake Energy, was the first to see the vision of freeing oil from the Utica. However, it was a successor company, Encino Energy, that figured out how to coax large quantities of oil out of the Utica shale.
In January 2023, three Marcellus/Utica companies — Chesapeake Energy, EQT, and Equitrans Midstream — launched the Appalachian Methane Initiative (AMI), a coalition committed to further enhancing methane monitoring throughout the Appalachia Basin and reducing methane emissions throughout the region (see 
Back in the summer of 2020, MDN told you about a lawsuit brought by an Ohio rights owner called TERA, an organization that owns the royalty rights for a number of leases with wells in Belmont County, OH, drilled by different producers, suing the producers for drilling into the Point Pleasant shale layer when the lease only mentions the Utica layer (see 
Last November, Northern Oil and Gas, Inc. (NOG), a company that invests in non-operated oil and gas assets (they let others do the drilling), announced a deal to enter the Utica Shale (see