Privately Held Ascent Resources Releases ESG Sustainability Report
Yesterday, Ascent Resources, LLC, Ohio’s largest shale driller, released its 2023 Sustainability Report (formerly called its Environmental, Social, and Governance, or ESG, report). The new report chronicles the company’s environmental, health and safety, social, and governance efforts and accomplishments in 2023. We’ve recently highlighted some other ESG reports, namely EQT and CNX. So why bring you Ascent’s ESG report? It’s not for the reason you might think…
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Yesterday, CNX Resources filed a trade secret lawsuit in Pennsylvania federal court accusing a former employee of wrongfully using the company’s confidential business information to file patent applications in his own name. The company alleges the employee violated his contractual obligations to CNX and misappropriated CNX trade secrets for his own personal gain.
We didn’t bring you the latest permit numbers on Friday because the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection’s report website was down (again, for the umpteenth time). The site was back online this morning, so we ran our weekly query and discovered PA issued a whopping three permits for the week of June 17-23, all of them issued to Coterra Energy in (gasp) the township of Dimock! Yes, drilling in Dimock is back. Love it! In addition, Ohio issued nine new permits, with seven going to Encino Energy for oil drilling in Guernsey and Harrison counties. Ohio also issued two permits to Ascent Resources in Jefferson County. West Virginia issued no new shale permits for that period.
Three weeks ago, the owner of Austin Master Services (AMS), American Environmental Partners (AEP), sent a press announcement to MDN to announce he has found a buyer for AMS (see 
The highly functional and responsible Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC), unlike its completely dysfunctional and irresponsible cousin, the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), continues to support the shale energy industry by approving water withdrawals for responsible and safe shale drilling. On June 13, the SRBC board approved 19 new water withdrawal requests within the basin, seven of them for water used in drilling and fracking shale wells in Pennsylvania. The Marcellus/Utica shale drillers (and one water company) receiving a green light from SRBC included BKV (3 requests), EQT, Keystone Clearwater Solutions, Seneca Resources, and Southwestern Energy.
Leftists (aka liberals, Communists, socialists, and leaders of the Democrat Party) believe they are smarter than you, they know more than you do, and they should be able to make decisions that affect your life outside of the laws created by duly elected members of Congress. For decades (some 40 years), we in the U.S. have lived under the tyranny of the bureaucratic administrative state following a court decision commonly referred to as the “Chevron deference” case. That case, decided in 1984 (ironic, no?), gave broad powers to federal agencies like the EPA and other executive branch agencies to create, in essence, their own laws (called regulations) without any specific delegation of authority by Congress to do so. It has led to the radical loss of freedom as bureaucratic leftists seized power to enact rules they demand YOU live under. No more! Last Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case that nullified and threw out the Chevron deference doctrine. This has HUGE implications for the entire oil and gas industry, including the Marcellus/Utica.
In March, MDN told you that the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) told Shell to file for a Title V air permit for its ethane cracker in Monaca no later than June 21 of this year or risk being shut down (see 
A little over a year ago, MDN told you that (at that time) that two Marcellus/Utica drillers — Seneca Resources and Northeast Natural Energy (NNE) — had joined CG Hub, the world’s first commodities trading platform focused exclusively on certified natural gas and certified natural gas certificates (see 
BKV Corporation (BKV), a driller in both the Pennsylvania Marcellus and Texas Barnett shale plays (majority-owned by Banpu, Thailand’s largest coal company), announced yesterday that it has signed a contract for the sale and purchase of Carbon Sequestered Gas (CSG) with Kiewit Corporation, one of North America’s largest construction and engineering companies. According to the press release, CSG is “a revolutionary, innovative, natural gas product that is Scope 1, 2 and 3 carbon-neutral, effectively mitigating the environmental impact of natural gas consumption.” Most, if not all, of the gas being labeled and sold by BKV as CSG comes from the company’s Barnett operation. However, BKV’s story has implications for all drillers, including drillers in the Marcellus/Utica.
Two days ago, MDN brought you the list of the Top 100 private oil and gas producers in the Lower 48 states, which includes four Marcellus/Utica drillers in the Top 10 (see 
Last week, MDN told you that two Big Green groups in Pennsylvania, Trout Unlimited and the Mid State Trail Association, are attempting to block a project by Pennsylvania General Energy (PGE) to install a tiny 3.7-mile gathering pipeline to connect several PGE wells to the Transco pipeline system, along with two 8-inch water pipelines of about the same length, in Lycoming County (see 
Who doesn’t love a good Top 10 (or, in this case, Top 100) list? Yesterday, Hart Energy published a list of the Top 100 private oil and gas producers in the Lower 48 states. The list is based on information provided by Enverus and Oil and Gas Investor. The article’s point was to call attention to the dramatic change in the list given the consolidation (mergers and acquisitions) over the past 18 months — changes which are “reshaping the landscape,” according to Hart Energy. When perusing the list, the first thing we noticed is that four of the Top 10 in the list of Top 100 are major gas and oil producers operating in the Marcellus/Utica.
Three weeks ago, 31 new permits were issued to drill in the entire Marcellus/Utica region. Two weeks ago, the number dropped (dramatically) to just seven new permits. And then last week, the number of permits issued soared once again — all the way up to 46. Bam! We just kicked it up a notch. Seneca Resources took the top spot for new permits, receiving a total of nine permits, all in Tioga County, PA. Chesapeake Energy and Antero Resources tied for second place with seven new permits each, with Chessy’s permits coming in Bradford County, PA, and Antero’s in Doddridge County, WV. Coming in third was Jay-Bee Oil & Gas with six permits issued in Pleasants County, WV. State by state, PA issued 24 new permits, OH issued 9, and WV issued 13 permits.