Antero Resources | Energy Companies | EQT Corp | Greene County (PA) | Olympus/Huntley & Huntley | Pennsylvania | Seneca Resources | Tioga County (PA) | Washington County | Weekly Permits | West Virginia | Westmoreland County | Wetzel County
12 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV May 2-8
Last week Pennsylvania issued 11 new shale well permits, down from 16 the week before. For the second week in a row, EQT led the way, issuing five permits. Ohio got skunked–issuing no new permits for Utica drilling. West Virginia issued just one new permit–to Antero Resources. Overall a pretty paltry showing for new permits in the M-U.
Read More “12 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV May 2-8”
MAX Environmental has operated the Bulger hazardous waste landfill in Smith Township (Washington County), PA since 1958. MAX has operated a second site, the Yukon hazardous waste landfill in South Huntingdon Township (Westmoreland County), PA since 1964. One of the primary customers for both landfills over the past 15 years has been the Marcellus industry–dumping drill cuttings (leftover dirt and rock from drilling). In 2019 MAX filed a request with the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to “delist” both sites as hazardous landfills, given what they accept is not hazardous. Some of the neighbors along with various Big Green groups object to the change in classification.
Using investment capital from Preferred Capital Securities, WhiteHawk Energy is buying mineral and royalty rights in southwestern Pennsylvania, primarily in Washington and Green counties, for $52.5 million. The assets include production and cash flow from over 950 horizontal Marcellus Shale wells. The wells are operated by EQT, CNX Resources, and Range Resources.
The Washington County, PA Chamber of Commerce held its State of The Economy event yesterday. One of the speakers, Denise Brinley (former executive director of Pennsylvania’s Office of Energy) said that southwestern Pennsylvania and the Pittsburgh region is a prime prospect to take advantage of establishing a $2 billion hydrogen hub. Western PA is in the “bullseye” of why funding was included in the recent federal infrastructure bill to establish four such hubs nationally, according to Brinley.
Penn State has launched a new research project to see if it can prove there is a link between water contamination in southwestern Pennsylvania and fracking. We’ve seen this movie before…or have we? In 2018 PA Gov. Tom Wolf, a liberal Democrat who sometimes supports the shale gas industry (as long as he can tax it) caved to demands from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to launch a “study” in a bid to “prove” cases of rare childhood cancer in southwestern PA can be tied to shale drilling in the region (see 
Pennsylvania’s Pipeline Investment Program (or PIPE) issues grants covering part of the cost for building new natural gas pipelines to connect homes and businesses, typically in rural parts of the state, to homegrown Marcellus Shale gas supplies. We’ve written about many of the PIPE grant projects in the past (
Holy smokes! What just happened? For months (and months and months) the cumulative number of weekly permits issued to drill new shale wells in the Marcellus/Utica has fluctuated from the low teens to perhaps 30 total on the upper end. Last week, from Jan. 17-23, an amazing 61 permits were issued to drill new shale wells. Double the usual. Wow! Pennsylvania issued 24 new permits, Ohio issued 9, and blow-the-doors-off-we’ve-never-seen-so-many-permits-issued-in-one-week for West Virginia, the Mountain State issued 28 new shale permits.
EQT Corporation, the largest natural gas producer in the United States, announced last Friday that all of its natural gas produced in Washington and Greene counties in Pennsylvania (the majority of its production, some 4 Bcf/d) is now officially certified as “responsibly produced” gas by two different certification organizations: Equitable Origin and MiQ. That 4 Bcf/d of certified gas represents 4.5% of all natural gas produced in the U.S.