First New Mahoning County Utica Well in Years Comes Online
The Youngstown Vindicator is reporting that one of the first new horizontal gas and oil wells to be drilled in Mahoning County, OH, in recent years has begun producing gas and oil at its well pad. The Wehr Spring Valley Farm well is producing oil and natural gas. However, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) has not yet released any production numbers for the well. The big news here is that drilling is migrating well north of the traditional locations for Utica drilling—to the “northern part” of the Utica. Is this a foretaste of good things to come in the northern Utica? Read More “First New Mahoning County Utica Well in Years Comes Online”
The mighty BP (formerly British Petroleum) is an oil and natural gas company attempting to transition into a renewable energy company. They’re failing. BP is having an identity crisis. It’s a European company and has bought into the false narrative that fossil energy is on the way out (“transitioning” to so-called renewables) due to concerns over mythical global warming. BP’s recently published Annual Energy Outlook for 2025 report (full copy below) takes a different approach from previous versions of the report. It offers two scenarios: What will happen between now and 2050 if we don’t change anything, called “Current Trajectory,” which means humans will turn Earth into a burning hell; and what will happen if the world finally gets serious about mythical global warming and commits to ensuring temperatures don’t rise more than 2 degrees Celsius, called “Below 2°.” 
For the week of September 15 – 21, the number of permits issued to drill new wells in the Marcellus/Utica decreased from the previous week, but not by much. There were 24 new permits issued across the three M-U states last week, down from 26 issued two weeks ago. Pennsylvania finally improved a bit, but only because of one driller. PA issued 11 new permits last week, with 10 of the 11 going to Range Resources. Range’s permits were spread across three counties, with one permit in Allegheny, five in Beaver, and four in Washington. The other PA permit went to Beech Resources for a well in Lycoming County. 
In October 2024, Chesapeake Energy completed its $8.2 billion merger with Southwestern Energy (renaming the combined company Expand Energy), and in the process became the country’s #1 highest producing natural gas company, taking that title away from EQT Corporation (see 
The annual 
In the closing hours of the 2014 West Virginia legislative session, the legislature passed Senate Bill (SB) 373, the Aboveground Storage Tank Act (see 
The highly functional and responsible Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC), unlike its highly 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 and safe shale drilling. The SRBC published a notice in the September 20 Pennsylvania Bulletin that the Executive Director of the SRBC approved and/or renewed 40 general water use permits in August for individual shale gas well drilling pads in Bradford, Centre, Clearfield, Lycoming, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Tioga, and Wyoming counties in Pennsylvania. 
EQT Corporation CEO Toby Rice, along with two other speakers (one from Enbridge and one from investment firm Engine No. 1) spoke on a panel at last week’s Bloomberg event called “Barrel of Tomorrow in the Age of AI” held in Houston. Rice and the others had some interesting comments about the current high price of electric and heating bills in the U.S. and how to decrease them. Their recommended solution to lower energy costs for U.S. residents is to build more natural gas pipelines. Rice also provided insight into the breakeven price that “marginal” producers need to break even and generate returns. 
For years, Big Oil companies based in other countries have been in love with LNG trading, including BP (UK), Shell (UK), Total (France), and Eni (Italy). In fact, in February 2016, Shell completed a $69.7 billion buyout and merger with BG, the largest such oil and gas deal since Exxon bought Mobil in 1999, because of LNG (see 
Recently, two neighboring towns in Greene County, PA, declared a Disaster Emergency related to a “frac-out” at the EQT Lumber well that happened three years ago, in July 2022 (see 
Evolution Well Services, headquartered in Houston with a regional office in Pittsburgh, specializes in electric fracking (“e-fracking”) — using natural gas from the well pad instead of diesel fuel to power turbines that create electricity to drive fracking pumps. It’s a much quieter, less-polluting version of fracking. EQT Corporation, the country’s second-largest natural gas producer, uses Evolution Well Services for much (all?) of its drilling. Evolution and EQT issued an announcement yesterday about a series of record-breaking achievements they’ve made in the Marcellus/Utica. 
Following three years of negotiations, Lycoming County Commissioners celebrated closing a deal with Range Resources to lease 1,350 acres in Jackson Township for shale drilling. The county is receiving a $5.4 million signing bonus, which works out to $4,000 per acre. Sweet. However, the county will receive just a 2% royalty for any oil/gas produced from the property. You read that right (not a typo)—just 2%, which has to be the lowest royalty rate we’ve ever seen negotiated, either with a private landowner or a municipality.