Permits Climb to 21; EQT and Coterra Each Grab 7 in Pennsylvania
The Marcellus/Utica region received 21 new shale well permits last week, Nov. 2 – 8, up 17 from the paltry 4 the week before. Pennsylvania issued 15 new permits, Ohio issued 5, and West Virginia issued 1. The drillers who received new-well permits last week were: Antero Resources, CNX, Coterra (now Devon Energy), EOG, and EQT. Now that’s more like it! Pennsylvania did the heavy lifting, with EQT and Coterra each grabbing seven permits for a single pad. And as we predicted last week, Ohio’s goose egg didn’t last: EOG picked up five new-well permits on Nov. 5. On the paperwork side, there were 14 actions on older permits, nine of them for one EQT pad in Wetzel County, W.Va. Read More “Permits Climb to 21; EQT and Coterra Each Grab 7 in Pennsylvania”
Here’s a fact worth bragging about at the next family dinner: the longest onshore horizontal shale wells ever drilled in the U.S. are all right here in the Marcellus/Utica, and the line between “record” and “routine” keeps moving. Five-mile laterals, unheard of a few years ago, are now showing up in quarterly earnings reports like any other line item. And they matter. A new UBS research report says longer laterals and faster drilling are a big reason U.S. drillers can keep growing production without adding many more rigs. So who holds the belt, who wants it, and what does it mean for landowners, service companies and pipelines? We put together a scorecard. 
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has finished looking into the teeny-tiny earthquake that hit near EQT’s Porter well pad in Allegheny Township (Westmoreland County) on Oct. 4. The verdict: no violation, no cause identified, and the pad keeps on working. When MDN told you about this “seismic event” last month, we pointedly did not jump to conclusions about whether the well caused it (see 
Week two of MDN’s weekly trip through the Pennsylvania Bulletin, and this one has a whale in it: Shell’s Beaver County cracker plant is finally getting its permanent air permit. The Nov. 7 edition (Vol. 56, No. 45) ran 184 pages. Beyond Shell, DEP signed off on three well pad air permits, four erosion permits, a pair of new gas pipelines in Tioga County, and three frac water recycling setups. A second gas-powered “compute center” also got its permit in Clearfield County. Here’s what matters to the shale crowd… 
When EQT announced on Oct. 26 that it would buy Range Resources (see 
A Roane County, WV, man who spent 12 years driving a truck hauling crude oil and brine has sued 15 energy companies, claiming that on-the-job exposure to benzene and “radioactive fracking brine” gave him a rare bone marrow cancer. The defendant list includes some of the biggest names in the Marcellus/Utica: Antero, EQT, Coterra, Expand Energy (formerly Chesapeake), and Shell. 
More Marcellus wells are on the way in Pine Creek country. On October 20, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued EQT ARO LLC a permit to build about 4.6 miles of 10-inch gas line through Cummings and Watson townships in western Lycoming County, starting at a well pad on a state forest tract. DEP’s notice in last Saturday’s Pennsylvania Bulletin says the line is “for the purpose of Marcellus Shale well development.” The same issue shows Pennsylvania General Energy (PGE) picking up a new earthmoving permit one township over. Pine Creek is open for business. 
It’s a rerun of last spring, only bigger. A dry autumn has left many small streams in Pennsylvania’s Northern Tier running low, and the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) has told shale drillers and their water suppliers to stop withdrawing water at 48 locations. Another 12 shale water sources are on the SRBC’s “watch” list, meaning they’re close to being shut off too. In April we reported 15 shutoffs and 9 watch sites (see 
Mike Rowe, of “Dirty Jobs” fame, sat down with EQT CEO Toby Rice for a 77-minute episode of his podcast, 
EQT, the biggest driller in the Marcellus/Utica, released its third-quarter 2026 numbers after the market closed yesterday. Normally we’d also have a call where CEO Toby Rice and CFO Jeremy Knop take analysts’ questions. Not this time. Two days after agreeing to buy Range Resources (
On Monday, we brought you the news that EQT Corporation is swallowing Range Resources in an all-stock deal that values Range at roughly $12.8 billion and creates a combined company worth more than $50 billion, including debt (see 
Here’s a story that made us smile this morning. EQT, about to become the country’s biggest natural gas producer once its ~$12.8 billion takeover of Range Resources closes, is leasing two brand-new LNG tankers. And EQT is naming them… wait for it… the Marcellus and the Utica! The ships arrive in 2028. Meanwhile, EQT plans to start trading LNG cargoes as soon as next year, open offices in London and Singapore, and possibly lease up to 10 more ships. Appalachian gas, on EQT-leased ships, with the names of our two great shale plays painted on the side. What’s not to love? 
Every Saturday, the Pennsylvania Bulletin publishes pages of DEP permit notices that almost nobody reads. We read them so you don’t have to. Taken one at a time, most look routine: an erosion permit here, an air permit there. Lined up side by side, they tell you which drillers are building, and where. Last weekend’s edition (Oct. 24) shows Expand Energy busy across the Northern Tier, Repsol and Seneca/NFG working in Tioga County, Devon still building in Susquehanna County, and XTO getting a new pad ready in Butler County. 
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 October 24th Pennsylvania Bulletin that the SRBC approved and/or renewed 33 general water use permits in September for individual shale gas well drilling pads in Bradford, Lycoming, McKean, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Tioga, and Wyoming counties.