Privately Held Ascent Resources Releases ESG Sustainability Report
Yesterday, Ascent Resources, LLC, Ohio’s largest shale driller, released its 2023 Sustainability Report (formerly called its Environmental, Social, and Governance, or ESG, report). The new report chronicles the company’s environmental, health and safety, social, and governance efforts and accomplishments in 2023. We’ve recently highlighted some other ESG reports, namely EQT and CNX. So why bring you Ascent’s ESG report? It’s not for the reason you might think…
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We didn’t bring you the latest permit numbers on Friday because the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection’s report website was down (again, for the umpteenth time). The site was back online this morning, so we ran our weekly query and discovered PA issued a whopping three permits for the week of June 17-23, all of them issued to Coterra Energy in (gasp) the township of Dimock! Yes, drilling in Dimock is back. Love it! In addition, Ohio issued nine new permits, with seven going to Encino Energy for oil drilling in Guernsey and Harrison counties. Ohio also issued two permits to Ascent Resources in Jefferson County. West Virginia issued no new shale permits for that period.
A little over a year ago, MDN told you that (at that time) that two Marcellus/Utica drillers — Seneca Resources and Northeast Natural Energy (NNE) — had joined CG Hub, the world’s first commodities trading platform focused exclusively on certified natural gas and certified natural gas certificates (see 
Two days ago, MDN brought you the list of the Top 100 private oil and gas producers in the Lower 48 states, which includes four Marcellus/Utica drillers in the Top 10 (see 
Who doesn’t love a good Top 10 (or, in this case, Top 100) list? Yesterday, Hart Energy published a list of the Top 100 private oil and gas producers in the Lower 48 states. The list is based on information provided by Enverus and Oil and Gas Investor. The article’s point was to call attention to the dramatic change in the list given the consolidation (mergers and acquisitions) over the past 18 months — changes which are “reshaping the landscape,” according to Hart Energy. When perusing the list, the first thing we noticed is that four of the Top 10 in the list of Top 100 are major gas and oil producers operating in the Marcellus/Utica.
While oil-focused and large diversified drillers in the U.S. made healthy profits during the first quarter of this year (January through March), such was not the case for natural gas-focused drillers. RBN Energy tracks 43 exploration and production (E&P) companies that are publicly traded and reports of those 43 that the 16 oil-focused and 15 diversified E&Ps were solidly profitable in 1Q24, earning $20.65/boe (barrels of oil equivalent) and $18.49/boe, respectively. However, the 12 gas-focused E&Ps were “under siege,” posting a loss of $1.65/boe.
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.
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