23 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV May 11 – 17
NOTE: MDN will not publish on Friday, May 22, and Monday, May 25, in observance of the Memorial Day holiday. Therefore, we are publishing the weekly permits report a day early.
The Marcellus/Utica region received 23 new drilling permits last week, May 11 – 17, up from the 22 permits issued two weeks ago. Pennsylvania issued 14 of last week’s permits. Ohio issued 4 new permits. West Virginia issued 5 new permits last week. The drillers who received new permits included: EOG Resources, EQT, Expand Energy, and Range Resources. Read More “23 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV May 11 – 17”

Three weeks ago, the Trump Department of Energy announced it is moving forward with funding for five of the original seven Biden-awarded hydrogen hub projects, spending $5 billion of the originally allotted $7 billion (see
Evolution Well Services, headquartered in Houston with a regional office in Pittsburgh, specializes in “electric” fracking — using natural gas from the well pad (instead of diesel fuel) to power turbines to create electricity that drives fracking pumps. We’ve written about Evolution’s e-fracking work in the Marcellus/Utica for years (
Wow! Is this the Trump effect? For the week of Jan 13 – 19, permits issued in the Marcellus/Utica to drill new shale wells achieved levels we haven’t seen in, oh, about four years. There were 41 new permits issued last week, up significantly from 27 issued the week before and 30 issued two weeks before. The Keystone State (PA) issued a whopping 25 new permits, with 17 (!) going to EQT spread across Greene and Washington counties. Another six permits went to Chesapeake Energy (now Expand Energy) in Bradford County. One permit each went to Range Resources and Apex Energy in Beaver and Westmoreland counties, respectively.
On May 30, 2023, a fire and subsequent explosion damaged an above-ground storage tank and the upper process building at the already-closed Fairmont Brine Processing plant in Fairmont, WV (see
The Fairmont Brine Processing plant, located at 168 AFR Drive in Fairmont (Marion County), West Virginia, was constructed between 2009 and 2010 by AOP Clearwater LLC. The plant was acquired by Fairmont Brine Processing (FBP) in 2012. FBP began pre-treatment operations at the site in 2013 and fully operated the plant beginning fall of 2014. In May 2017, MDN reported that FBP was not paying some of its vendors (see