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29 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Feb 27-Mar 5
New shale permits issued for Feb. 27 through Mar. 5 in the Marcellus/Utica stayed the same as the prior week. There were 29 new permits issued in total last week, including 7 new permits for Pennsylvania, 20 new permits for Ohio, and 2 new permits issued in West Virginia. Last week the top receiver of new permits was Hilcorp Energy with 8 new permits–all of them in Columbiana County, OH. The second highest number of permits went to Encino Energy, with 4 permits in Carroll County and 2 in Columbiana County. EOG Resources also received 4 permits in Carroll County. It seems the northern part of the Ohio Utica saw a lot of love last week.
Read More “29 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Feb 27-Mar 5”
Coterra Energy, the new name for the former Cabot Oil & Gas that merged with oil driller Cimarex Energy, issued its fourth quarter and full-year 2022 update yesterday. Coterra’s natgas program is focused on drilling in Susquehanna County in northeastern Pennsylvania. A couple of things stood out for us from the update. First, Coterra’s Marcellus production dropped in 2022. During 4Q21, Coterra produced an average of 2.5 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day) of natural gas in the Marcellus, versus producing 2.1 Bcf/d in 4Q22–down 14%. For the full year, Coterra produced an average of 2.3 Bcf/d in 2021 and 2.2 Bcf/d in 2022–down 6%.
Spanish-owed Repsol owns 214,000 net acres of leases in the Marcellus Shale, primarily located in northeastern Pennsylvania in Bradford, Susquehanna, and Tioga counties. Early last year (in January 2022), Repsol closed on a deal to buy Rockdale Marcellus out of bankruptcy for $222 million (see 
The difference between the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) and the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) is stark. The former is well-run and rational, the latter is disorganized and irrational. At least with respect to fracking. Over the weekend, the SRBC published a notice in the Pennsylvania Bulletin to announce that during the month of January, the agency approved 38 requests for daily water use on shale well pads in the SRBC’s jurisdictional territory in Pennsylvania, totaling some 233.5 million gallons. Put another way, this is a handy list of where drilling will soon happen in northeastern PA.
We have two related lawsuits to report on involving landowners in Susquehanna County, PA, and Callon Petroleum. As most lawsuits are, these two are complicated. But, at a very high level, the concept is simple. The landowners allege that Callon Marcellus (formerly Carrizo Marcellus) shorted them on royalty payments. The landowners sued, but Callon sold its assets in northeastern PA (to BKV) and engaged in a shell game to move the proceeds of that sale ($74 million) directly to the mothership, Callon Petroleum, as a way of avoiding liability to pay, just in case they lose the royalty lawsuit.
Unlike the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), which gets the creepy crawlies at the mere mention of the word “fracking,” the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) has been dealing with fracking and water requests for use in fracking for more than a decade. Somehow the SRBC, a quasi-governmental agency (as is the DRBC), manages to allow fracking, and there are NO negative impacts on local water and NO negative impact on the Susquehanna River and its tributaries. Must be the people who run the SRBC are just more talented than those who run the DRBC.
Yesterday MDN brought you the great news that Coterra Energy (formerly Cabot Oil & Gas) would be allowed to restart drilling in a nine-square-mile area in Dimock, PA (Susquehanna County) following a “no contest” plea deal with PA’s bullying Attorney General, Josh Shapiro, on a misdemeanor charge (see 
For all of you Paul Harvey fans (God rest his soul), this is, “The Rest of the Story.” Two weeks ago, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, about to become Governor on Jan. 1 (a bona fide tragedy), made a big splash by announcing he had finally bullied Coterra Energy, the former Cabot Oil & Gas, into taking a plea deal in the infamous Dimock, PA case of methane migration into a few water wells (see