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SRBC Approved 35 Shale Gas Well Pad Water Use Permits in August
The highly functional and responsible Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC), unlike its dysfunctional and irresponsible counterpart, the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), continues to support the shale energy industry by approving water withdrawals and consumptive use requests for responsible, safe shale drilling. The SRBC published a notice in the September 26th Pennsylvania Bulletin that the SRBC approved and/or renewed 35 general water use permits in August for individual shale gas well drilling pads in Bradford, Clinton, Elk, Lycoming, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Tioga, and Wyoming counties. Read More “SRBC Approved 35 Shale Gas Well Pad Water Use Permits in August”
A federal judge in Pittsburgh has ruled that two EQT subsidiaries must face most of a lawsuit filed on behalf of four West Virginia kids who claim that emissions from EQT’s shale wells and a nearby compressor station made them sick. On Sept. 23, U.S. District Judge Robert Colville threw out just one of the five claims, a request for a medical monitoring trust fund, and he gave the kids’ lawyers 21 days to fix and refile it. The rest of the case moves forward. That includes a “strict liability” claim that EQT had argued West Virginia law flat-out does not allow against oil and gas operations. It’s a pleading-stage ruling, not a verdict. Even so, it’s a loss for EQT, and it’s one the whole industry should watch. 
EQT’s top drilling executive told the 
The Marcellus/Utica region received 17 new drilling permits last week, September 14 – 20, up 1 from the 16 permits issued two weeks ago. Pennsylvania issued 6 of the new permits. Ohio also issued 6 new permits. And West Virginia issued 5 new permits. The drillers who received new permits last week were: Ascent Resources, EOG Resources, EQT, Expand Energy, and Seneca Resources. 
When Appalachian gas prices fall into the basement, EQT turns down the valves, and CEO Toby Rice says the strategy is paying off. In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, Rice put a dollar figure on it for the first time: a little over $200 million a year in benefit from selling less gas when prices are low and more when they’re high. He also said EQT, the country’s No. 2 gas producer, will pump more gas in 2026 than last year while spending less to do it. Rice talked up the company’s proposed POWER Pipeline to Ohio, its Mountain Valley Pipeline expansions, and a new 10-year LNG supply deal with Lithuania. His outlook for global gas demand is, let’s say, very bullish. 
Back in March, a delegation of European heavyweights came to Pittsburgh with their shopping bags, looking to buy more U.S. LNG. Leading the charge was Jovita Neliupšiene, a Lithuanian who now serves as the EU’s ambassador to the U.S. Looks like they found what they were shopping for — in Pittsburgh. Lithuanian state-owned energy company Ignitis has picked a subsidiary of Pittsburgh-based EQT Corporation, one of the largest U.S. natural gas producers, to supply it with 10 cargoes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) — one per year from 2027 through 2036. EQT beat out other bidders in a competitive tender. It’s the first long-term gas supply contract between Ignitis and a U.S. company. Small deal? Yes. Symbolic deal? Very much so. 
It took three years, two conditional use applications, one appellate court loss, a subdivision, a three-hour hearing, and a deadline extension — but EQT finally got its vote. On Monday night (Sept. 14), Elizabeth Township’s (Allegheny County, PA) Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to approve two conditional use permits for EQT’s six-well Heracles project: one for the well pad, and one for the interconnect pad (the spot where gas from the wells hands off to a pipeline). The pad sits less than a half-mile from Elizabeth Forward High School, so the approvals come with a long list of strings attached, including a 10-year “emergency preparedness fund” EQT must pay into. Big Green group Protect Elizabeth Township (PET) says it will keep fighting in court. In a surprise twist, the commission president revealed that someone has approached the township about building a data center. 
The fall “turn down the valves” season for Marcellus/Utica gas has arrived, and it showed up about a week early. Last Friday (Sept. 11), the spot price at Texas Eastern M-2 (aka Tetco M-2), the key pricing point for gas produced in southwestern Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio, averaged $1.435 per MMBtu (million British thermal units, roughly 1,000 cubic feet of gas). That’s 6.5 cents below the $1.50 mark that EQT, the region’s biggest driller, has flagged as its trigger for curtailing (temporarily cutting back) production. So, are shut-ins coming? History says probably, at least for a while. 
Accounting giant Ernst & Young dropped its annual reserves benchmarking study yesterday, and while the press release leads with oil, the real story for our part of the country is buried in the tables: EQT is now the largest holder of proved natural gas reserves in the United States, and Appalachian-focused producers control roughly a third of all the gas reserves booked by America’s 30 biggest publicly traded drillers. 
EQT is planning another pipeline — and this one is big. Through a brand-new subsidiary called Appalachian Transmission Gateway LLC (ATG), the Marcellus/Utica’s largest driller has opened bidding on the “POWER Pipeline,” a 42-inch, 50-mile line that would carry a full 1 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of gas from Greene County, Pennsylvania, west to the Clarington hub in Monroe County, Ohio. The open season quietly began Aug. 26 and runs through Oct. 26. We found no press release announcing it — the notice simply went up, and the trade press caught it a week later. 
Appalachian drillers just got a hard lesson in how fast the money can vanish. New analysis from RBN Energy shows pre-tax profits at gas-weighted producers cratered 75% in the second quarter — and nine of the ten companies in RBN’s gas-weighted peer group are Marcellus/Utica operators. This is an M-U report card, whether RBN calls it one or not. The piece, written by Nicholas Cacchione and published August 26, covers second quarter results for 37 publicly traded exploration and production companies (E&Ps). RBN sorts them into three buckets: Oil-Weighted, Diversified, and Gas-Weighted. Every company in that last bucket except Comstock Resources — a Haynesville player — has major operations in the Marcellus or Utica. 
Sixty-two days after a wastewater pipeline let go at Equitrans’ Richter impoundment in Aleppo Township, Greene County, the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) went back out to look at the site on August 18 — and didn’t like what it found. Contaminated water is still moving, soil is still dirty, and DEP says the cleanup has largely stalled. Quick refresher for those just tuning in. On June 17, 2026, Equitrans Water SVC (PA) LLC — the water-handling arm of EQT — reported a wastewater release from a pipeline tied to its Richter Shale Gas Water Impoundment while the site was being reclaimed. DEP issued a cleanup order on June 30 requiring the company to stop contaminated water from migrating off site and from reaching ground or surface water. 
Six days after WhiteHawk Minerals (NYSE: WHK) filed its first quarterly report as a public company, CEO Daniel Herz took the stage at EnerCom Denver and did something CEOs usually avoid: he put a dated natural gas price forecast on the record. He thinks $4 gas is the number that unlocks the next wave of supply, he doesn’t think the Haynesville gets where people expect, and he thinks the back half of this decade is going to be a roller coaster.