NOG Invests in Utica Wells, Acreage Operated by Ascent Resources
In February 2021, Northern Oil and Gas, Inc. (NOG), a company that invests in non-operated oil and gas assets (they let others do the drilling), announced it had purchased 64,000 net acres producing ~120 MMcfe/d (million cubic feet equivalent per day) in the Marcellus/Utica from Reliance Industries Limited (see Northern O&G Buys 64K Acres of RIL’s Non-Op M-U Assets for $250M). According to NOG’s second quarter 2022 update, the company continued sniffing around the M-U, looking for more deals (see Northern Oil & Gas Continues to Sniff for Deals in the Marcellus). It took a while (more than a year), but they finally found another deal. Yesterday, NOG announced a “bolt-on” acquisition in its Permian portfolio, and a deal to enter the Ohio Utica.
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New shale permits issued for Nov 6 – 12 in the Marcellus/Utica slipped but still turned in a respectable number. There were 22 new permits issued last week, versus 37 issued the week before. Last week’s permit tally included 6 new permits in Pennsylvania, 16 new permits in Ohio, and no new permits in West Virginia. Hilcorp Energy was the winner of most permits issued, with 12 new permits issued for a single well pad in Columbiana County, OH.
Gulfport Energy, the third-largest driller in the Ohio Utica Shale (by the number of wells drilled), emerged from bankruptcy in May 2021 with a new board and top management. In January of this year, the company appointed a new CEO, John Reinhart, the former President and CEO of M-U driller Montage Resources Corporation before that company was gobbled up by Southwestern Energy (see 
The Long Ridge Energy Terminal, host to a Utica shale gas-fired power plant that went online in November 2021, scheduled brief downtime for routine maintenance during the fourth quarter of 2022. But when the techs started to analyze the equipment, they discovered a problem, turning a couple of weeks of downtime into more than a month.