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35 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Dec 11-17
New shale permits issued for Dec 11 – 17 in the Marcellus/Utica continued the trend up over the previous week. There were 35 new permits issued last week versus 27 issued two weeks ago. Last week’s permit tally included 17 new permits in Pennsylvania, 13 new permits in Ohio, and 5 new permits in West Virginia. The company receiving the most permits last week was Ascent Resources with 8 new permits in two different counties: Guernsey and Belmont counties in OH. Antero was second highest with 5 new permits in Ritchie and Doddridge counties in WV.
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New shale permits issued for Nov 27 – Dec 3 in the Marcellus/Utica were much improved over the previous few weeks. There were 25 new permits issued last week versus 14 issued two weeks ago and just one new permit three weeks ago. So the trend is our friend! Last week’s permit tally included 15 new permits in Pennsylvania, 8 new permits in Ohio, and 2 new permits in West Virginia. Three companies tied for top place with 4 permits each: Seneca Resources in PA, Ascent Resources and Encino Energy in OH.
In a court case that stretches back to 2019, Antero Resources, the biggest driller in West Virginia, challenged how its wells had been valued for tax purposes in Doddridge and Richie counties for 2016 and 2017. Antero said the combined value of its wells for those years should have been $1.488 billion. The state tax commissioner reckoned the value to be $1.513 billion. The controversy over well valuations, not only for Antero but other drillers, led to a reworking of how the state law values shale wells (see 
A group of landowners in Harrison and Doddridge counties (in West Virginia) sued Antero Resources, claiming the company had deducted post-production costs from royalties not allowed under the leases they had signed. Last year, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia ruled mostly in favor of the landowners. Antero appealed the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (4th Circuit). Yesterday, the judges of the 4th Circuit issued their ruling (full copy below). Nobody got everything they wanted–we’d call it a split decision. However, Antero did win the right to make deductions in certain circumstances.
Antero Midstream hired Veolia Water Technologies to build and operate a state-of-the-art frack wastewater recycling facility in Doddridge County, WV, which began operations in 2017 (see 
Yesterday both Antero Midstream (the pipeline subsidiary of Antero Resources), and Crestwood Equity Partners announced a deal to sell Crestwood’s remaining Marcellus assets to Antero for $205 million. The assets include 72 miles of dry gas gathering pipelines and nine compressor stations with approximately 700 MMcf/d of compression capacity located in Doddridge County and Harrison County in West Virginia.