Have Marcellus/Utica Drillers Gone DUC Hunting Too Often?
DUCs are drilled but uncompleted wells. Drillers sink a hole first and then return later to “complete” the well by fracking it and connecting it to sales. An increase in DUCs means more new drilling is happening. A decrease in DUCs means fewer new wells are drilled while previously drilled wells are completed. According to a report by Enverus, some drillers have entered 2025 with substantially fewer DUCs than last year, creating potential effects on capital efficiency and production. Nearly every shale play, including the Marcellus/Utica, has seen DUCs fall. In some cases, by the hundreds. Read More “Have Marcellus/Utica Drillers Gone DUC Hunting Too Often?”
Last December, MDN told you that the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection could find $600,000 to blow on “environmental justice” nonsense, but the very next day, it cried poverty that there’s not enough money in the budget to fund the Oil and Gas Regulatory Program (see 
ECA Marcellus Trust I, the royalty interest holder in some of the wells drilled and maintained by Greylock Energy in Greene County, PA, announced last Thursday that it will issue a two-cent dividend to unitholders for the fourth quarter of 2024. The company paid half a penny dividend in 3Q24. The company continues to hold back some profits ($90,000 in 4Q24) to build a cash reserve for “future known, anticipated or contingent expenses or liabilities.” 
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: How Alaska can seize the opportunity of a Trump presidency; NATIONAL: EPA terminates nearly 400 workers amid US government purge; EPA cancels nine more contracts, saving nearly $60 million; Suburban Propane and NASCAR unveil propane-powered track dryer at Daytona 500; WTI slips below $71 amid supply confidence; INTERNATIONAL: India to buy more US oil, LNG to avoid tariffs; Miliband vows to ban fracking permanently after huge UK gas field discovered; Tariffs or no tariffs, the world wants and needs America’s natural gas. 
For the week of Feb 3 – 9, the number of permits issued in the Marcellus/Utica to drill new shale wells remained healthy. Two weeks ago, 22 new permits were issued. Last week, the number increased to 24 new permits issued. The Keystone State (PA) issued 11 new permits last week. Nine permits went to Range Resources for two pads in Washington County. One permit each went to Snyder Brothers and EQT in Armstrong and Greene counties, respectively. 
Something is going on in the State of Maryland. Last week, we told you that the Democrat leadership in the Maryland state legislature was pushing a bill that would rechristen gas-fired power as “green” and make it easier to build new gas-fired power plants in the state (see 
Yesterday, MDN told you that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved a “fast-track” plan from the country’s largest electric grid, PJM Interconnection (which covers all or parts of 13 states, including PA, OH, and WV) to change how the grid operator decides which new power plants can connect to the system first (see 
What Elon Musk’s audits of federal money payments to NGOs, states, and individuals are finding is beyond shocking. It’s criminal. There is MASSIVE fraud happening across all of government. As you’ll read in another post today, Lee Zeldin, Trump’s new EPA Administrator, found $20 BILLION in money transfers from the EPA to a bank the Biden people affected just before leaving. It is perhaps the biggest theft of money in history! The Biden folks called it “throwing gold bricks off the Titanic.” This is stuff people should go to jail for for the rest of their lives. President Trump put a pause on the transfer of money from certain programs (not Medicare, not Medicaid, not payments to individuals). The pause has Democrats, like PA Gov. Josh Shapiro, squealing like pigs being weaned from mother’s milk. Shapiro filed a lawsuit to force the return of mother’s milk. Typical. The Dems are spending junkies. 
Two months ago, a video circulated on social media featuring a Biden EPA political appointee talking about “tossing gold bars off the Titanic,” intentionally rushing to get billions of tax dollars recklessly out of the agency before Inauguration Day. The EPA’s new sheriff, Lee Zeldin, has located $20 billion of those gold bars sitting at a bank. The money is meant to fund radical anti-Trump efforts related to the environment. Zeldin is demanding the money be returned pronto. 
President Trump is close to taking an ax to the root of an EPA regulation that has allowed leftist environmentalists to rule the roost for the past 15 years. In 2009, the EPA adopted a major regulatory rule called the “endangerment finding.” The finding concluded that six so-called greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) — constitute an endangerment to public health and welfare due to their contribution to global climate change. The finding gives the EPA the power to regulate those gases under the umbrella of the Clean Air Act. Trump intends to overturn the finding, which would take down all the greenhouse rules for CO2 and methane. 
A new player is entering the Marcellus looking to extract lithium from shale brine (wastewater), and it’s doing it in a big way in Susquehanna County in the northeastern corner of Pennsylvania. Avonlea Lithium Corporation, a subsidiary of Vancouver-based Rain City Resources Inc., will provide its newly-tested technology to Kendra II, based in Springville, PA, to provide an on-site plant to extract lithium from Marcellus brine. The new plant will be set up and operating by April 2025. 
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) issued its latest monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook on Tuesday, the agency’s monthly best guess about where energy prices and production will go in the next 12 months. In this latest assessment, EIA said the natural gas price at the U.S. benchmark Henry Hub is expected to average $3.80 per million British thermal units (MMBtus) in 2025—up about 23% from its January forecast ($3.10). EIA also raised its estimate for 2026, putting the annual average price at $4.20 MMBtus, up 5% compared with $4.00 in its January report. 
The Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) owns and manages more than 1.5 million acres of state game lands throughout the Commonwealth. The primary purpose of these lands is the management of habitat for wildlife and providing opportunities for lawful hunting and trapping. You might think PGC gets most of its revenue from hunting and trapping licenses and fees. You would be wrong. PGC allows shale drilling on some of its vast holdings, and leases and royalties generate 39% of the income for PGC (as of 2024). The problem (if you can call it a problem) is that royalty revenue from shale for the PGC varies widely from year to year. For example, the revenue flowing to PGC from shale during its last fiscal year decreased by a whopping 46%. But the PGC was ready. The way the PGC prepares for those wild swings is instructive for all landowners. 
In December, MDN told you the country’s largest electric grid, PJM Interconnection, which covers all or parts of 13 states, including PA, OH, and WV, proposed new changes to how it decides which new power plants can connect to the system first. The new policy *favors* adding natural gas-fired power over other types of power like unreliable solar and wind (see