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Baker Hughes U.S. Rig Count Down 1 @ 539; M-U Unchanged @ 36
Last week, the Baker Hughes U.S. rig count continued its downward trend, losing another rig to end at 539 active rigs nationwide. The count has been down 14 of the last 15 weeks, with the only slight increase happening a month ago. The Marcellus/Utica count remained the same (after gaining one rig three weeks ago) at a combined 36 active rigs. PA is running 18 active rigs. OH is running 11 rigs. And WV is operating 7 rigs. There were 24 rigs targeting the Marcellus and 12 rigs targeting the Utica last week. Read More “Baker Hughes U.S. Rig Count Down 1 @ 539; M-U Unchanged @ 36”
For the week of July 28 – August 3, the number of permits issued to drill new wells in the Marcellus/Utica more than doubled from the previous week. There were 34 new permits issued across the three M-U states last week, 20 more than the 14 issued two weeks ago. The Keystone State (PA) issued 15 new permits. Both EQT and Range Resources received six permits each for single well pads in Westmoreland and Washington counties, respectively. Expand Energy received three permits for a pad in Bradford County. 
The parents of four children under the age of 18 (from three families) filed a lawsuit on their kids’ behalf against EQT subsidiaries EQT Production Company and EQT XL Midstream Operating, claiming that emissions from a nearby compressor station and nearby shale wells operated by EQT have led to severe health-related problems for the kids. The families used to live in the rural hamlet of Knob Fork in Wetzel County, WV. They all have since moved. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and money for ongoing monitoring of the kids’ health. 
PJM Interconnection is the electrical grid operator covering Pennsylvania, along with all or parts of 12 other states and the District of Columbia. For months, the Democrat governors of PJM states have been hammering PJM, blaming PJM for higher electricity prices, even though it is their own policies that are driving electricity prices higher (see 
A group of 26 financial officers (state treasurers) from 21 states sent letters to 18 major financial institutions this week, including BlackRock, warning them to abandon environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices if they wish to continue doing business with their states. Notably, Pennsylvania’s Treasurer, Stacy Garrity, was one of the signatories on the letter. West Virginia’s Treasurer, Larry Pack, signed, too. Unfortunately, Ohio’s Treasurer, Robert Sprague (a Republican), was NOT one of the signatories. Curious. 
At the end of the last legislative session in December, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, an extremist liberal, signed into law a new climate bill forcing a short list of Big Oil companies to pay $75 billion in “recovery” assessments over the next 25 years for their alleged role in causing mythical global warming (see 
In September 2022, EQT announced a deal to buy privately owned Tug Hill Operating’s West Virginia shale assets (90,000 acres and 800 MMcf/d of production in West Virginia) for roughly $5.2 billion (see 
We spotted a fascinating Hart Energy article that summarizes information from a recently released Mizuho Securities study. Mizuho researcher Nitin Kumar says that we are roughly halfway through the shale revolution. He posits that approximately 290,000 horizontal wells have been landed in shale rock in the Lower 48 and that under current economic conditions and with current technology, another 270,000 locations remain. It will take another 25 years to drill them, says Kumar. Which is interesting, although we take some issue with those findings. However, embedded in the statistics is something that caught our attention: the value of undeveloped acreage in various shale plays, including the Marcellus. 
The Baker Hughes U.S. rig count has been hemorrhaging for 11 consecutive weeks. Last week, the U.S. rig count declined by another two rigs to its lowest level since October 2021, ending the week at 537 active rigs. You have to go back to the dark days of the pandemic, July 2020, for the previous 11+ consecutive weeks of decline in the rig count. The Marcellus/Utica stayed even (after falling by one two weeks ago) at a combined 35 active rigs. There were 23 rigs targeting the Marcellus and 12 rigs targeting the Utica last week.