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Reading the Permit Tea Leaves: Who’s Building Where in PA Shale
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. Read More “Reading the Permit Tea Leaves: Who’s Building Where in PA Shale”
The Marcellus/Utica region received 10 new drilling permits last week, October 5-11, down a big 19 from 29 permits issued two weeks earlier. Pennsylvania issued 7 of the new permits. Ohio issued 2 new permits. And West Virginia issued a single new permit. The drillers who received new permits last week were: Ascent Resources, EQT, PennEnergy Resources, and Range Resources. 
Another big data center is heading to western Pennsylvania, and this one plans to make its own power with a natural gas-fired plant, right next door to a shale gas well pad. A Florida LLC and a Coraopolis microgrid company have filed preliminary plans for the Misty Hollow Energy & Data Campus: a 1-million-square-foot data center and a 300-megawatt power generation facility on a former dairy farm along Prospect Road (PA Route 528) in Forward Township, Butler County. The site sits next to a PennEnergy Resources well pad, and the township engineer wants a letter from PennEnergy signing off on the plan’s revised access to that pad. The developer now confirms the 300 MW plant will run on natural gas, and it will power the campus “behind the meter,” off the grid.
Regional and national indicators are driving optimism in the Marcellus/Utica Basin, which currently supplies 31% of U.S. natural gas. Despite recent constraints from low prices and limited pipeline capacity, drillers like Infinity Natural Resources and Expand Energy now predict significant output growth coming in the new year. This resurgence is fueled by surging in-basin demand from AI data centers, major power plant conversions in Pennsylvania, and improved takeaway prospects, such as Boardwalk’s proposed Borealis pipeline to the Gulf Coast (see 
At the recent 2025 DUG Appalachia Conference & Expo held in Pittsburgh in August, Hart Energy honored the biggest, best, and most efficient private (not publicly traded) E&Ps in the Appalachian Basin’s Marcellus and Utica shales. Hart Energy’s editorial leadership chose honorees from among companies operating in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. Editors evaluated operator metrics, looking for cost efficiency, production, inventory preservation, and other factors. Who is the best of the best among privately owned drillers? 