Antero Resources | Bradford County | Coterra Energy (Cabot O&G) | Energy Companies | EQT Corp | Fayette County | Monongalia County | Northeast Natural Energy | Pennsylvania | Pennsylvania General Energy | Southwestern Energy | Susquehanna County | Tioga County (PA) | Washington County | Weekly Permits | West Virginia | Wetzel County
18 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Apr 3-9
New shale permits issued for Apr. 3-9 in the Marcellus/Utica dropped again from the prior week. There were 18 new permits issued in total last week, down from 21 in the prior week (and down from 32 the week before that). Last week’s tally included 13 new permits for Pennsylvania, 0 new permits for Ohio, and 5 new permits in West Virginia. Last week the top receiver of new permits was EQT with 7 new permits (6 in Fayette County, PA, and 1 in Washington County, PA). Two companies tied for #2 with 4 permits each–Coterra (Susquehanna County, PA) and Northeast Natural Energy (Monongalia County, WV).
Read More “18 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Apr 3-9”
Yesterday MDN told you about the recently-filed application by the State of Pennsylvania to attract one of 6 to 10 so-called hydrogen hubs to the Keystone State (see 
These days oil and gas companies (and other types of companies, too) have to “prove” they are helping to make Mom Earth better by achieving (giggle) “net-zero” carbon emissions. We giggle because net-zero is a myth. It’s a sham. And everybody knows it. But, these are the games people play now. Every night and every day now. Never meanin’ what they say now. Never sayin’ what they mean. (Whoops! Back to center.) Our own Marcellus/Utica companies, including the largest natural gas producer in the country, EQT, are forced to play the games too. Yesterday, EQT announced the company’s first “nature-based carbon offset initiative.” EQT will pay for trees to be planted in a Wheeling, WV park as atonement for emitting (sinning) CO2.
Last summer, MDN brought you the news about a lawsuit against Diversified Energy and EQT over the issue of old and “abandoned” wells in West Virginia (see 
Yesterday, EQT Corporation and Context Labs announced a partnership to advance the commercialization of verified low-carbon intensity natural gas products and carbon credits. The partnership brings together EQT, the largest natural gas producer in the U.S., and Context Labs, an expert in distributed ledger technology, advanced climate data, and analytics. The partnership will help EQT prove that the natural gas it produces is low-carbon and responsible, and make it easier to market the gas to those who want to buy (and pay more for) low-carbon gas.
In a case initially filed last summer in Ohio, a Belmont County mineral rights owner alleges that Rice Drilling (now owned by EQT) drained natural gas from a rock layer it did not have the right to access according to the signed lease. Golden Eagle Resources says the lease allowed Rice to drill down only as far as the Utica Shale layer, which Rice did. However, Golden Eagle says fractures from Rice’s fracking of the Utica layer reached down into the adjacent Point Pleasant layer and drained some of the gas from the Point Pleasant too–and that’s a no-no according to the lease.
The sharp analysts at RBN Energy have sifted through the announcements and “guidance” statements from 42 of the country’s major publicly-traded oil and natural gas drillers for 2023. Among them are 11 gas-focused drillers, nine of which have operations in the Marcellus/Utica region. Looking at the list of 11 gas-focused drillers, RBN finds production will be just about the same in 2023 as it was in 2022–projecting a dip of 1% this year. The analysis also finds collectively that the 11 gas-focused drillers will spend around 9% more on drilling this year due to Bidenflation. Spending more to produce the same–not a winning formula for a politician to run on.
Back in January, three Marcellus/Utica companies–Chesapeake Energy, EQT, and Equitrans Midstream–launched what the three call the Appalachian Methane Initiative (AMI), a coalition committed to further enhancing methane monitoring throughout the Appalachia Basin, with an aim to reduce methane emissions throughout the region (see 
As we have been reporting, CERAWeek, the world’s premier energy conference, is happening all this week in Houston, Texas. On Tuesday, Bloomberg reporters filed a roundup/overview of happenings at the event. Below is the roundup from Day Two of CERAWeek, which includes a comment by EQT CEO Toby Rice, who said he believes the natural gas market will come back into balance in the “middle half” of this year as production adjusts (i.e., less drilling) following the recent precipitous collapse in prices.
The difference between the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) and the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) is stark. The former is well-run and rational, the latter is disorganized and irrational. At least with respect to fracking. Over the weekend, the SRBC published a notice in the Pennsylvania Bulletin to announce that during the month of January, the agency approved 38 requests for daily water use on shale well pads in the SRBC’s jurisdictional territory in Pennsylvania, totaling some 233.5 million gallons. Put another way, this is a handy list of where drilling will soon happen in northeastern PA.