Antero Resources | Armstrong County | Belmont County | Carroll County | Energy Companies | Guernsey County | Gulfport Energy | Harrison County | INR/Infinity Natural Resources | JKLM Energy | Noble County | Ohio | Pennsylvania | Snyder Brothers | Tioga County (PA) | Tyler County | Weekly Permits | West Virginia | Wyoming County (PA)
Shale Permits Dip to 9 Last Week; Gulfport, Snyder Bros Lead the Way
The Marcellus/Utica region received 9 new shale well permits last week, Oct. 19 – 25, down 3 from 12 the week before. Pennsylvania issued 4 new permits, Ohio issued 4, and West Virginia issued 1. The drillers who received new-well permits last week were: Antero Resources, Gulfport, INR, JKLM Energy, and Snyder Brothers. It was a quieter week on the new-permit front. The busiest driller of all, EOG Resources, didn’t get a single permit for a brand-new well — but it did get seven permits to tweak wells it was already approved to drill in Ohio (more on that below). Read More “Shale Permits Dip to 9 Last Week; Gulfport, Snyder Bros Lead the Way”
Shell CEO Wael Sawan had warm words yesterday for the company’s Beaver County ethane cracker plant, calling it “the 800-pound asset” in Shell’s chemicals business and saying it has been performing very, very well. Then, in the same breath, he repeated what he’s been saying for more than a year: Shell is not the “natural owner” of chemical assets, and it is in “deep discussions” to sell or partner them, with news expected in the coming months. Sawan’s comments came during Shell’s third-quarter 2026 earnings call. There’s one new wrinkle. If Shell can’t get the price it wants, the more likely outcome may be folding its chemicals business into someone else’s and keeping a minority stake, rather than selling outright. We read through the call transcript and Shell’s 3Q documents to see what they tell us about Monaca and the chemicals division. 
In June, we told you that 194 landowners in Salem Township (Luzerne County, near Berwick) were lining up to become AI millionaires by selling their land for a giant new data center project (see 
In August, MDN told you about two federal lawsuits, filed six days apart by Big Green groups, aimed at killing Nationwide Permit 12 (NWP 12). That’s the Army Corps of Engineers permit that lets pipelines cross streams and wetlands without a separate federal review at every single crossing (see 
National Fuel Gas (NFG) is laying more pipe in Tioga County. Its gathering subsidiary, NFG Midstream Covington, has asked the PA Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) for a stream-and-wetland crossing permit for two natural gas pipelines, 24-inch and 20-inch, running side by side through Farmington, Deerfield, and Chatham townships. The notice also mentions a 16-inch water line. The filing comes just 10 days after NFG’s board approved splitting the company in two, and it strongly suggests NFG’s Seneca Resources drilling arm is gearing up for more Utica production in Tioga County. 
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. 
The highly functional and responsible Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC), unlike its dysfunctional and irresponsible counterpart, the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), continues to support the shale energy industry by approving water withdrawals and consumptive use requests for responsible, safe shale drilling. The SRBC published a notice in the October 24th Pennsylvania Bulletin that the SRBC approved and/or renewed 33 general water use permits in September for individual shale gas well drilling pads in Bradford, Lycoming, McKean, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Tioga, and Wyoming counties. 
State Sen. Gene Yaw (R-23), who has chaired the Senate Environmental Resources & Energy Committee since 2013, wants Pennsylvania’s data centers to pay their own version of the shale impact fee. On Thursday (Oct. 23), Yaw sent a co-sponsorship memo to all Senate members announcing plans for an annual, statewide “data center impact fee” modeled on Act 13 of 2012, the law that created the impact fee drillers have paid every year since. Yaw says the fee would be based on each facility’s size and electricity demand, and would be paid every year a data center operates. That’s different from today’s system, where towns rely on one-time deals negotiated with developers. The money would go to host communities and statewide programs, just like the shale fee. What’s not in the memo? Any dollar figures. Here’s the memo, followed by what it means (and what it doesn’t say). 
Did the ground rumble in Westmoreland County on Sunday, October 4, because of fracking? The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) asked that question, checked EQT’s nearby Porter well pad, and found nothing abnormal. EQT’s pressure logs for that day were clean, no violations were cited, and DEP asked for more paperwork. That’s good news for EQT, even if the headline you may have seen elsewhere makes it sound much more ominous. 
Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh, just became the first county in the nation to force private employers to pay for 12 weeks of parental leave — at up to 100% of wages, with the employer footing the entire bill. County Executive Sara Innamorato signed the regulation yesterday, two days after County Council approved it 11-4. Here’s what caught our eye (thanks to a heads-up from PIOGA): the mandate doesn’t care where your headquarters is. If you’re a driller or service company with 15 or more employees anywhere, and one of your employees works 80 hours in Allegheny County in a year, that worker is covered. 
Another one bites the dust in northeastern Pennsylvania. On Wednesday night, Archbald Borough Council (Lackawanna County) voted 7-0 to deny a zoning request for the Wildcat Ridge Data Center Campus, a 14-building AI “hyperscale” project proposed for roughly 575 acres on the mountainside above Business Route 6. The campus would have needed 1.6 gigawatts (GW) of electricity, more than 3.3 million gallons of water per day in summer, and 588 diesel-powered backup generators. About 175-200 residents packed the borough building’s gym and erupted in cheers when the vote came down. The developer, Brooklyn-based Cornell Realty Management, isn’t talking, but just about everyone in the room expects an appeal to county court. Why should Marcellus folks care? Because 1.6 GW of new, around-the-clock electric demand is, in our neck of the woods, a gas demand story. 
Yesterday, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) threw another party, this time to celebrate the 500th orphan and abandoned well plugged since Josh Shapiro became governor in January 2023. Good for them. Seriously. But we can’t help noticing that Ohio plugged 480 orphan wells in 2025 alone, nearly as many as PA has plugged in almost four years. From 2023 through 2025, Ohio plugged 1,215 old wells. That’s 2.4 times PA’s entire Shapiro-era total, and it doesn’t count a single well Ohio has plugged so far in 2026.