Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Franklin County | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Ohio | Regulation | Statewide OH
Dem Judge Shuts Down Anti Effort to Block Drilling Under Ohio Parks
Sometimes, we get a miracle. A liberal Democrat judge from Franklin County, OH, ruled on Friday that anti-fossil fuel fanatics don’t have the right to appeal a decision by the Ohio Oil & Gas Land Management Commission (OGLMC) to meet and award contracts to drill under (not on) several Ohio state parks, including the 20,000-acre Salt Fork State Park in Guernsey County. The OGLMC is scheduled to meet today to make announcements awarding contracts for several tracts, including Salt Fork State Park. We expect antis will try to derail the proceedings illegally. Grab the popcorn…
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Last week, the Baker Hughes rig count gained five rigs after losing two rigs the week before. The count went from 621 active rigs two weeks ago to 626 last week. The national count has consistently stayed between 620 and 625 (or one or two above or below that range) since last October. The Marcellus/Utica lost one rig last week. Pennsylvania actually added two rigs last week and now operates 24 rigs (the most since last June). Ohio and West Virginia each lost one rig, with Ohio now at 12 active rigs and West Virginia at seven active rigs.
According to Reuters, oilfield service companies and drillers have put the brakes on hiring and “further job cuts could loom” as natural gas producers respond to sliding prices by slashing spending on new wells to reduce excess production. We told you yesterday that Chesapeake Energy announced a coming rig and frac crew cut in the Marcellus (see 
The money behind Big Green never stops. Where in the heck do they get it all? In November 2023, the Ohio Oil & Gas Land Management Commission (OGLMC) met in a public forum and voted to allow shale drilling under (not on top of) three different state-owned tracts of land: all 20,000 acres of Salt Fork State Park in Guernsey County, more than 300 acres of Valley Run Wildlife Area in Carroll County, and 66 acres of the Zepernick Wildlife Area in Columbiana County (see 
In June 2016, Massachusetts-based Clean Energy Future broke ground on an $800 million, 940-megawatt Utica gas-fired electric plant in Lordstown (Trumbull County), OH (see 
DT Midstream (DTM), headquartered in Detroit, owns major assets in the Marcellus/Utica region and other regions like the Haynesville. DTM issued its fourth quarter 2023 update last Friday. The Marcellus/Utica region (which they call Northeast in the report) received several prominent mentions during a conference call with analysts. Also of note were comments by DT CEO David Slater, who said he’s positioning the company to take advantage of “bolt-on” opportunities in the regions where they operate. Meaning he’s on the lookout for mergers and acquisitions.
There were 19 new permits issued to drill in the Marcellus/Utica during the week of Feb. 5 – 11, versus 20 permits issued the prior week. Pennsylvania issued 13 new permits last week. Ohio issued 4 new permits. West Virginia issued 2 new permits last week. Range Resources scored the most new permits with 5 split between Allegheny and Beaver counties in PA. Chesapeake Energy received 4 permits in Bradford County, PA. Seneca Resources received 4 permits in Elk County, PA. Encino Energy received 4 permits in Guernsey County, OH. And Diversified Energy received 2 permits in Harrison County, WV.
Encino Energy purchased Chesapeake Energy’s Ohio oil and gas assets (including Utica Shale assets) in 2018 for $2 billion (see 
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has an excellent article reporting on an effort by Tenaska, one of the largest privately operated companies in the U.S., to build a carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) hub spanning tens of thousands of acres in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. Landmen are “knocking on doors again” in all three states, looking to sign up landowners to store carbon dioxide deep underground. We have the details below, including how much money Tenaska is paying as a signing bonus and how much is on offer (per acre) each year.
Anti-fossil fuel zealots (climate catastrophists) have set their sights on blocking drilling and fracking under (not on top of) Ohio’s state-owned land, including several state parks. Their favorite tactic is to lie and smear the companies that seek to do such drilling. One tiny problem (for the zealots): they don’t know which companies are bidding to do the drilling. And that drives them even more crazy. So the zealots, with the help of mainstream media, are trying to paint the process as “secretive” — like there’s something nefarious that the fracking industry wants to hide. In reality, the identity of the winning bid is kept “secret” until the deal is officially announced because IT’S STATE LAW.
Peregrine Energy Partners, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, continues a program to buy royalty rights in the Marcellus/Utica and elsewhere. We have chronicled a number of Peregrine’s M-U purchases since 2019 (
Last November, Northern Oil and Gas, Inc. (NOG), a company that invests in non-operated oil and gas assets (they let others do the drilling), announced a deal to enter the Utica Shale (see 
Last Thursday, members of the Pennsylvania Senate, including PA State Sen. Gene Yaw, and members of the Ohio General Assembly met in Columbus for a hearing on energy reliability, sustainability, and affordability. The hearing consisted of two panels, one focused on state and national energy impacts and another on consumer and generational impacts. PJM, the organization that manages the mid-Atlantic power grid consisting of 13 states and the District of Columbia, testified. Indeed, the main thrust of the meeting seemed to be how to keep the growing PJM grid from crashing into blackouts because of an overreliance on unreliable renewables like solar and wind.