Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Kinder Morgan | Litigation | Pipelines | Tennessee Gas Pipeline
2 Lawsuits in 6 Days: Big Green Targets the Permit Behind Every Pipe
Two federal lawsuits landed in the same Washington, D.C. courthouse six days apart last month, and while both are nominally about pipelines in Mississippi and Alabama, Marcellus and Utica readers should pay close attention. Not because of where the pipe goes — but because of which pipelines the greens dragged into their complaints as Exhibit A. Read More “2 Lawsuits in 6 Days: Big Green Targets the Permit Behind Every Pipe”
PJM Interconnection announced yesterday (Aug. 3) that 715 new power projects totaling more than 200 gigawatts (GW) made it into Cycle 1 of its overhauled interconnection process — the line that generators must stand in before they’re allowed to plug into the grid. The headline number is impressive. The breakdown is more impressive, at least if you own mineral rights in Greene County or run a rig in Belmont County. 
Want to know what the smartest money in the natural gas business expects to happen in the Northeast this winter? Don’t ask a politician. Look at the forward curve. As of the first of August, traders were pricing December-through-February gas at Algonquin Citygate (the Boston benchmark), Iroquois Zone 2 in New York, and three Tennessee Gas Zone 6 points in New England above $18 per MMBtu. At the other 77 pricing hubs Natural Gas Intelligence tracks across the U.S. and Canada, that same three-month strip averages under $5. Read that again. Same country. Same historically abundant supply. Roughly four times the price. 
The Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) — the outfit that owns the New York Stock Exchange and runs the world’s largest energy derivatives markets — put out a press release in mid-July containing a number that ought to catch the eye of every Marcellus/Utica producer and royalty owner. On July 1, open interest in ICE’s North American financial natural gas futures and options markets hit an all-time record of 13.4 million contracts, up 9% from a year ago. “Open interest” is just a fancy way of counting the bets still sitting on the table — contracts that have been opened and not yet closed out or settled. A record means more people than ever are using these markets to lock in a price ahead of time. Which raises the obvious question: lock in a price against what? 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Morrisey touts 50 by 50 plan in addressing oil and gas association; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: EnCap Flatrock announces sale of M6 Midstream to Williams for $5.5B; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas futures post small gains; Amogy and 2G Energy successfully demonstrate integrated ammonia-to-power generation; The climate Faucis are coming, the climate Faucis are coming!; INTERNATIONAL: Crude sinks as tensions ease; Q3 is set for extreme volatility, oil analysts warn; We’ve lost the war against climate change – time to scrap net zero; India to climate cartel – count us out; Strait of Hormuz crisis shifts LNG’s biggest risk from supply to demand. 
CNX Resources posted its second quarter 2026 results last Thursday, and the numbers tell two stories at once. On the drilling side, CNX is running lean — just 2 wells drilled all quarter. On the financial side, the company spent more buying back its own stock ($199 million) than it spent drilling and completing wells. When a producer would rather buy its own shares than drill, that says something about where gas prices sit right now — and where management thinks they’re headed. 
Enbridge reported second quarter results on Friday, July 31, and buried in a Canadian midstream giant’s quarterly slide deck — a document that is 90% oil sands, Permian, and balance sheet talk — is the best piece of news Appalachian producers have gotten out of New England in fifteen years. Project Beacon, Enbridge’s proposed expansion of the Algonquin Gas Transmission (AGT) system into New England, ran a binding open season from May 18 to July 1. An open season is simply a pipeline asking shippers to raise their hands and commit, in writing, to buy capacity. CEO Greg Ebel told analysts the response “significantly exceeded our initial expectations.” Matthew Akman, who runs Enbridge’s gas transmission business, said Beacon would be “multiple times” the size of the AGT Enhancement project already underway, and that a big enough Beacon could save New England utility customers more than $1 billion a year. 
TC Energy issued its second quarter 2026 update on July 30, and the headline numbers were strong: comparable EBITDA of C$2.9 billion, up 12% over 2Q25, and full-year guidance now tracking the upper end of the C$11.6–$11.8 billion range. Nice, but that’s investor stuff. The news that matters for Marcellus/Utica landowners, drillers, and midstreamers is sitting in the project tables — and in a demand forecast TC has now raised two years running. 
Dominion Energy reported second-quarter 2026 results on July 31, and while Wall Street focused on the penny-counting, there were three items in the release and on the analyst call that matter to Marcellus/Utica producers, midstreamers, and landowners: two new gas-fired power plants moving into permitting, a merger timeline that’s now locked in at the state level, and a nine-figure write-off on renewable assets that tells you which way the wind is actually blowing. 
Every so often the antis tell you exactly what they’re up to, and you just have to sit back and enjoy it. On Saturday, Inside Climate News ran a story on the ongoing campaign by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP), Clean Air Council, and their friends to jack up setbacks — the required distance between a well pad and the nearest building — from the current 500 feet to distances that would end new shale drilling in Pennsylvania. The new twist? They’ve hitched the campaign to the data center boom. More data centers means more gas, and more gas means (in their telling) more danger, so hurry up and pass the rules. It’s the same petition MDN has been tracking since 2024, dressed in a 2026 outfit. 
Let’s be honest — corporate “sustainability reports” are usually 100+ pages of stock photography, buzzwords, and pie charts about employee engagement. We normally give them a wide berth. But Williams released its 2025 Sustainability Report on July 29, and this one is different. Underneath the ESG wrapping paper is a straight-up growth story, and a surprising amount of it runs directly through the Marcellus and Utica. If you’re a landowner in Licking County, a driller in the Utica dry gas window, or anyone who owns WMB shares, there’s real news here. 
Something of an upset last week for rigs operating in the Marcellus/Utica region. We maintained the same cumulative count of 36 last week, which has been at that level for 12 weeks in a row. However, Ohio lost one rig in the Utica (now operating 10 rigs), while West Virginia gained that lost rig in the Marcellus (now operating 9 rigs). Pennsylvania maintained its rig count of 17. The national count increased by 1 to 588, which ties with a few weeks ago to be the highest national rig count in more than a year. 
The Marcellus/Utica region received 19 new drilling permits last week, July 20 – 26, down 7 from two weeks ago. Last week, Pennsylvania issued 10 new permits. Ohio issued 4 new permits. And West Virginia issued 5 new permits. The drillers who received new permits included: Ascent Resources (1), EOG Resources (1), EQT (7), Expand Energy (5), Infinity Natural Resources (2), Range Resources (2), and Snyder Brothers (1). 
Antero Resources, the biggest driller in West Virginia and roughly 11% of all Appalachian production, dropped its second quarter 2026 numbers on July 29 and held its analyst call the next morning. Three things jumped off the page: a record quarter, a dry gas well result that borders on spectacular, and a rare public admission that Antero turned down a power deal in its own backyard because the money wasn’t good enough. 
Antero Midstream Corporation (AM) posted second quarter 2026 results on Tuesday and held its analyst call yesterday morning. A quick word on the corporate plumbing for newer readers: Antero Midstream and Antero Resources (AR) are two separate publicly traded companies that share a management team. AR drills the wells; AM gathers, compresses and moves the gas and handles the water. Different shareholders, same brain trust. The headline number is a good one. AM gathered 4.1 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day) during the quarter, a 19% jump year over year and a company record. Compression volumes rose 17%. Most of that growth came from the HG Midstream assets AM bought earlier this year and has now fully digested. Processing and fractionation capacity at AM’s joint venture ran at 100% utilization — you can’t do better than full.