Have Marcellus/Utica Drillers Gone DUC Hunting Too Often?
DUCs are drilled but uncompleted wells. Drillers sink a hole first and then return later to “complete” the well by fracking it and connecting it to sales. An increase in DUCs means more new drilling is happening. A decrease in DUCs means fewer new wells are drilled while previously drilled wells are completed. According to a report by Enverus, some drillers have entered 2025 with substantially fewer DUCs than last year, creating potential effects on capital efficiency and production. Nearly every shale play, including the Marcellus/Utica, has seen DUCs fall. In some cases, by the hundreds. Read More “Have Marcellus/Utica Drillers Gone DUC Hunting Too Often?”
ECA Marcellus Trust I, the royalty interest holder in some of the wells drilled and maintained by Greylock Energy in Greene County, PA, announced last Thursday that it will issue a two-cent dividend to unitholders for the fourth quarter of 2024. The company paid half a penny dividend in 3Q24. The company continues to hold back some profits ($90,000 in 4Q24) to build a cash reserve for “future known, anticipated or contingent expenses or liabilities.” 
For the week of Feb 3 – 9, the number of permits issued in the Marcellus/Utica to drill new shale wells remained healthy. Two weeks ago, 22 new permits were issued. Last week, the number increased to 24 new permits issued. The Keystone State (PA) issued 11 new permits last week. Nine permits went to Range Resources for two pads in Washington County. One permit each went to Snyder Brothers and EQT in Armstrong and Greene counties, respectively. 
CNX Resources’ Radical Transparency™ program is a first-of-its-kind public-private collaboration announced between CNX and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro in November 2023 (see 
There are a lot of nonprofits that do a lot of great work. MDN editor Jim Willis has served on several boards of such groups. We say that to preface two posts today that take aim at nonprofits (otherwise called NGOs or nongovernmental organizations) that are NOT doing great work and, in some cases, are corrupt. Most large public companies will find a few NGOs and hand money to them as part of their “S” in ESG (environment, social, governance) programs. Companies that donate allow NGOs to distribute the money to various agencies, causes, and other nonprofits. The problem is the NGOs often don’t do a good job. Sometimes, the NGOs have sticky fingers and keep some of the money for themselves. CNX Resources, a big publicly traded driller in the Marcellus/Utica, takes a different approach to charity. 
Expand Energy is the new company formed from the merger of Chesapeake Energy with Southwestern Energy. Expand is essentially Chesapeake Energy 2.0. Expand CFO Mohit Singh spoke at last week’s 2025 NAPE Summit in Houston. He had some fascinating things to say, including this: “Just to be clear, in our view, at least 75% of the natural gas demand growth is going to come from LNG.” He called LNG demand “durable” and reliable. AI (artificial intelligence) data center demand for natural gas, on the other hand, is volatile and “noisy,” according to Singh. 
We previously reported that INR (Infinity Natural Resources), which drills exclusively in the Marcellus/Utica region, floated an initial public offering (IPO) that brought in money on the high end of expectations and that the newly issued stock immediately started trading some 10% higher (see 
We spotted some news on the investor website GuruFocus that surprised us. Major investment firm Wellington Management Group made “a significant” addition to its portfolio by acquiring 10,406,240 shares of Coterra Energy on Jan. 31. The company paid $27.72 per share, a $288 million investment. But that’s not the biggest surprise. Wellington already owned a significant number of shares. With the addition of the recent 10.4 million shares, Wellington now owns 81,616,253, or 11.1% of Coterra’s total shares. Wellington is one of the largest investor/owners of Coterra Energy. 
We’ve been pretty hard on Equinor since 2018 when Statoil changed its name to Equinor, apparently ashamed of being associated with the term oil (see 
The chickens are coming home to roost for Venture Global, an LNG export company that uses loopholes and excuses to avoid selling LNG cargoes to the companies that signed contracts to buy those cargoes. The company recently launched an initial public offering (IPO), hoping to raise $2.3 billion (see 
We suppose we shouldn’t be shocked, but we are. Reuters is exclusively reporting that Canadian pension fund CPP Investments, the majority owner of Encino Acquisition Partners (aka Encino Energy), is considering either a sale of the company or possibly an initial public offering (IPO) that values the company at roughly $7 billion. Encino’s claim to fame is that after taking over Chesapeake Energy’s Ohio Utica assets in 2018, it cracked the code on how to coax crude oil (condensate) out of the low-pressure Utica shale (see 