Seneca Output Slips 7% as NFG Readies Spin, Retools Well Design
National Fuel Gas Company (NFG), the Buffalo-based utility, pipeline and drilling company that plans to spin off its Seneca Resources drilling subsidiary as a separate public company in the second half of 2027, issued its fiscal fourth-quarter (Jul-Sep) and full-year 2026 update this week. (NFG’s fiscal year runs Oct. 1 to Sept. 30.) The parent company had a very good year, with adjusted earnings up 9%. Seneca, not so much. Seneca’s production dropped 7% in the quarter to 104 Bcf (about 1.13 Bcf/d). Full-year output of 419.5 Bcf came in below even the lowered guidance, and Seneca expects fiscal 2027 production to be roughly flat. Management blamed three things: a dud Marcellus pad in Lycoming County, so-so Upper Utica results, and “frac interactions” (better known as frac hits) between Lower Utica wells in Tioga County. The good news is that Seneca thinks it knows what went wrong, and it expects growth to resume in fiscal 2028. Read More “Seneca Output Slips 7% as NFG Readies Spin, Retools Well Design”
A Lycoming County sportsmen’s club that has been around since 1936 just lost its federal tax-exempt status, and the reason is its Marcellus royalty checks. On Oct. 29, the U.S. Tax Court sided with the IRS, ruling that gas royalties made up so much of the club’s income that it no longer qualified as a tax-exempt “social club.” A lot of MDN readers run, or sit on the boards of, nonprofits that collect signing bonuses and royalty checks: churches, fire companies, land trusts, granges, hunting camps. So we read the full 20-page decision and looked into how the rules work for other types of nonprofits. Our conclusion: hunting and social clubs are most at risk, but every nonprofit with a lease should sit down with its tax attorney soon. 
More Marcellus wells are on the way in Pine Creek country. On October 20, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued EQT ARO LLC a permit to build about 4.6 miles of 10-inch gas line through Cummings and Watson townships in western Lycoming County, starting at a well pad on a state forest tract. DEP’s notice in last Saturday’s Pennsylvania Bulletin says the line is “for the purpose of Marcellus Shale well development.” The same issue shows Pennsylvania General Energy (PGE) picking up a new earthmoving permit one township over. Pine Creek is open for business. 
Back in January, we told you that Vistra Corp. had agreed to buy Cogentrix Energy and its 10 natural gas-fired power plants from private equity firm Quantum Capital Group for about $4 billion (see 
It’s a rerun of last spring, only bigger. A dry autumn has left many small streams in Pennsylvania’s Northern Tier running low, and the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) has told shale drillers and their water suppliers to stop withdrawing water at 48 locations. Another 12 shale water sources are on the SRBC’s “watch” list, meaning they’re close to being shut off too. In April we reported 15 shutoffs and 9 watch sites (see 
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. 
The Marcellus/Utica region received 16 new drilling permits last week, September 21 – 27, down 1 from the 17 permits issued two weeks ago. Pennsylvania issued 6 of the new permits. Ohio also issued 1 new permit. And West Virginia issued 9 new permits. The drillers who received new permits last week were: Antero Resources, Ascent Resources, Beech Resources, Expand Energy, and Range Resources. 
It finally happened. Chord Energy, the Bakken-focused driller that inherited a big non-operated slice of the northeast Pennsylvania (NEPA) Marcellus when it bought Enerplus in 2024, has found a buyer. That buyer is POSCO International, the trading and energy arm of South Korean steel giant POSCO. The price is $550 million. MDN first told you in February 2025 that Chord was thinking about selling this asset, and in July 2025 that it was actively shopping it (see links below). The deal covers approximately 32,000 net acres and trailing 12-month (TTM) production of approximately 121 MMcf/d (MMcf/d means million cubic feet per day). The gas is all “residue” gas, meaning dry gas with no NGLs (natural gas liquids like ethane and propane). 
Range Resources had a genuinely rotten 16 hours at its Laurel Hill B well pad in Cogan House Township, Lycoming County, last week. First, a gasket blew on a water filter pod and sent recycled frack water down the pad’s fill slope. Then, while the state inspector was standing there writing that one up, a water truck hauling more of the same stuff drove off the access road and rolled over. MDN obtained both DEP inspection reports, and they tell a more complete story than the headlines indicate. 
Eureka Resources sold the business at all three of its shuttered Pennsylvania frack wastewater plants. What it did not sell — and legally could not sell — is the obligation to finish hauling the waste out. The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) put that in writing last week, and added five words that ought to get somebody’s attention in Williamsport: DEP “is considering alternative enforcement measures.” The news comes, again, not from Eureka and not from a DEP press release, but from the Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association, which keeps sending the agency questions and publishing the answers. DEP Northcentral communications manager Megan Lehman replied by email Aug. 20; the Riverkeeper posted the exchange Aug. 24. 
Two months ago, we told you PA Attorney General Dave Sunday had charged Eureka Resources with seven crimes over years of leaking tanks at its Standing Stone plant in Bradford County (see 
The long, sad saga of Eureka Resources has a new chapter — and for once, it’s not another fine or another leak. Eureka has sold the business operations at all three of its shuttered Pennsylvania frack wastewater treatment plants. Two of the three went to Select Water Solutions, one of the biggest water-management companies in the oilfield. The third went to a Washington County trucking outfit. We didn’t hear this from Eureka. We heard it from the Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association, which pried the details out of the PA Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) in advance of the one-year anniversary of the Aug. 17, 2025 spill that dumped 16,000 gallons of untreated wastewater into the West Branch of the Susquehanna River (see