28 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Sep 23 – 29
There were 28 permits issued to drill new shale wells in Marcellus/Utica for the week of Sept. 23 – 29, down slightly from the 32 issued the prior week. The Keystone State (PA) had 15 new permits, with seven of them going to Range Resources, most of them in Washington County. Three permits were issued to Chesapeake Energy in Bradford County, and two permits were issued to Southwestern Energy in Susquehanna County. As of Tuesday, Chesapeake and Southwestern combined in a merger to form Expand Energy (see Chesapeake & Southwestern Complete Merger; Now #1 U.S. Gas Driller). It’s going to take a while before the name change flows through to new permits, so we’ll keep reporting on the permits by their given names for now. Read More “28 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Sep 23 – 29”
The Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) published a notice in the Saturday edition of the Pennsylvania Bulletin that says the SRBC’s Executive Director recently approved or renewed 24 general water use permits for shale gas drilling pads in Bradford, Cameron, Clearfield, Clinton, Lycoming, Susquehanna, Tioga and Wyoming counties in the Keystone State (full list below). Approval by the Executive Director is the first step in the process. Each permit will also require a separate water withdrawal approval before water begins to flow from the Susquehanna (and its tributaries) to shale well pads. 
A couple of interesting developments with the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC), which, unlike its dysfunctional cousin, the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), the SRBC continues to allow water withdrawals to supply water for shale fracking in northeastern Pennsylvania. The first development is that over the weekend (on Saturday), the SRBC Hydrologic Conditions Monitor showed low stream flows in some areas that triggered water withdrawal restrictions for water users, including seven shale gas water withdrawal locations (most of them for driller Repsol). The other development is that two days earlier, on Thursday, the SRBC approved new water withdrawal requests for 22 new projects, including eight from shale drillers! 
Eureka Resources, which operates three frack wastewater treatment facilities in the Marcellus Shale, has idled one of its three plants, the Standing Stone plant in Bradford County, PA. According to an inspection report by the Department of Environmental Protection conducted on August 19, Bob Cooney, Vice President of Operations at Eureka Resources, told the DEP inspector that the facility’s “primary customer” had stopped sending wastewater to the plant. As a result, all plant employees were laid off as of approximately July 30. This morning, MDN spoke to Eureka CEO Dan Ertel about what’s going on at the plant and plans for the future. 
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.
As we report in a companion post today, Pennsylvania is currently dishing out close to $180 million in impact fees raised from 2023 shale activity — PA’s version of a severance tax (see PA PUC Distributes 2023 Impact Fee – Revenue Dropped $99M YOY). As the name implies, some 60% of the money raised goes to the counties and municipalities where drilling happens, those “impacted” by shale drilling. The other 40% goes to the black hole of Harrisburg for redistribution to various state agencies and the other counties with no shale drilling. Let’s look at how some counties and towns will spend the money coming their way.
Earlier this month, MDN brought you the great news that New Fortress Energy’s (NFE) proposed Wyalusing LNG export plant (in Bradford County, PA) and a docking facility in Gibbstown (in New Jersey, along the Delaware River) to load ships with PA-produced LNG, are not dead yet (see 
Last year in March and then again in May, New Fortress Energy (NFE) confirmed to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it plans to apply for updated permits to build an LNG export plant in landlocked northeastern Pennsylvania (see 
Over the past seven-plus years, BKV Corporation (Banpu Kalnin Ventures), the American arm of Banpu (96% owned by Banpu, Thailand’s largest coal mining company), has become one of the top 20 gas-weighted natural gas producers in the U.S. BKV originally entered the American shale sector by investing $500 million in 2016-2017 to buy existing Marcellus wells and acreage in northeast Pennsylvania. Then the company went wandering into other shale plays (see 
We tried to cram the gist of the news into the headline but found we could not. This is a big story, for multiple reasons. Most news outlets are reporting (and this is not incorrect) that EQT pulled off a big deal to divest a good chunk of its nonoperated assets (acreage and functioning wells in which EQT owns a minority stake) in northeastern Pennsylvania, trading those assets for 10,000 operated acres in Lycoming County, PA (in northeastern PA), plus 26,000 operated acres in Monroe County, OH, plus receiving $500 million cash, in a deal with Norway’s Equinor (formerly Statoil). EQT divesting from its nonop assets is a big deal. However, the bigger news, in our humble opinion, is that Equinor has (with this deal) completely exited all operated assets in U.S. shale. The company wants to keep its fingers in the U.S. shale pie, but only as a nonop operator — that is, investing in wells that other companies drill and maintain.