M-U Rigs Flat @ 35 as Haynesville Rigs Roar to 59; Nat’l Count Up 5
The rest of the country is drilling. We’re not. Well, at least not as much. The Marcellus/Utica held flat at 35 rigs for a second straight week — the lowest count on our 52-week chart — while the national count added five rigs to hit 593, the highest since March 2025. Pennsylvania stayed at 16 rigs, Ohio at 10, West Virginia at 9. Nobody moved. Meanwhile, the Haynesville, our chief rival for gas-directed capital, tacked on three more rigs to reach 59. Read More “M-U Rigs Flat @ 35 as Haynesville Rigs Roar to 59; Nat’l Count Up 5”
Here’s a puzzle for you. The Trump EPA has spent 18 months dismantling the Biden administration’s carbon rules for power plants. The final repeal has been parked at the White House Office of Management and Budget since May 14 — and as of this writing it’s still sitting there, past the 90-day review window that ran out on August 12. Everybody in the business assumes it’s a done deal. So why are state regulators still writing those very same carbon limits into brand-new permits for brand-new gas plants — including two projects that will burn Marcellus and Utica gas? 
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Diversified said to close in on Birch deal; How NY’s neighboring electric systems handled the July 2026 heat wave; Data centers are the factories of the intelligence age; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas futures make modest gains; AI’s impact on the environment is absolutely horrifying, new paper finds; The delusional premises of woke greens; Trump refinery plan aims to cut fuel prices, boost security; New analysis ties blue-state climate policies to higher electricity rates, red states to lower costs; Michael Bloomberg and the pervasive conflicts of interest in his empire; INTERNATIONAL: Oil rises as US threatens Iran; Indian refiners in panic buying mode; JPMorgan says global gas turbine orders soar to record; Hoping for an energy-intensive future; Slow to start on LNG exports, Canada now has its pedal to the metal. 
The Marcellus/Utica region received 8 new drilling permits last week, August 3 – 9, down 7 from two weeks ago. Pitiful. (Cue Linda Ronstadt’s “
Back in March, we brought you news that the Trump administration had announced “South Mon,” a $17 billion, 4.3-gigawatt (GW) natural gas-fired power hub headed for southwestern Pennsylvania, funded as part of Japan’s $550 billion U.S. investment commitment (see 
WhiteHawk Minerals (NYSE: WHK), the Philadelphia company that has quietly become one of the largest mineral and royalty owners in the Marcellus, filed its first full quarterly report as a public company this week: $111.8 million of new acquisitions, record production of 70.0 MMcfe/d, and its first real dividend at $2.00 per share annualized. But the most interesting thing WhiteHawk said all week wasn’t in the press release. It came out of CEO Daniel Herz’s mouth on Thursday’s earnings call — some of the biggest drillers in Appalachia are now partnering with WhiteHawk to buy minerals ahead of the drill bit. 
Venture Global (VG), the Arlington, Virginia-based LNG exporter that operates the Calcasieu Pass and Plaquemines liquefaction plants in Louisiana — and is building a third, CP2 — reported second quarter 2026 results Tuesday that were, by any measure, a blowout. Revenue hit $4.6 billion (up 48% from 2Q25), net income came in at $1.3 billion (up 266%), and consolidated adjusted EBITDA reached $2.5 billion (up 79%), the largest quarterly EBITDA in company history. VG shipped 127 cargoes in the quarter and raised its full-year EBITDA guidance to $8.7-$9.1 billion, up from the $8.2-$8.5 billion it guided to in May. The company also passed its 1,000th cargo overall and jacked up its quarterly dividend by 122%. Why do we care in Appalachia? Because Plaquemines is fed by pipelines that carry Marcellus/Utica molecules south — and VG is planning to nearly double in size. 
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its August Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) on Tuesday — the agency’s monthly toss at the energy dartboard. Last month EIA nudged its Henry Hub natural gas price forecast up a few pennies. This month it took a real bite out of it. EIA now expects Henry Hub to average $3.44/MMBtu in 2026 (down from $3.67 last month) and $3.31/MMBtu in 2027 (down from $3.49). For the current quarter, the number is $2.87/MMBtu — a full 50 cents below what the agency predicted a month ago. The short version for landowners and royalty owners: gas is going to be cheap this fall. The longer version is more interesting, and it’s a story about where the gas is coming from. 
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A new report from RBN Energy fills in a piece of the Project Beacon puzzle we haven’t fully covered: two separate Millennium Pipeline expansions — one already sanctioned, one still on the drawing board — that DT Midstream and TC Energy are advancing to feed New England’s growing appetite for Marcellus/Utica gas. One is moving fast. The other needs New York State’s blessing, which is never a sure thing. 
Forward natural gas prices for this coming winter at the Cove Point LNG terminal in Maryland have gone parabolic — and if you produce, gather, or transport Marcellus/Utica gas, you should care, because the pipes behind this story are the same pipes you use every day. A quick primer: a ‘forward price’ is what buyers and sellers agree today to pay for gas delivered on a future date — think of it as locking in a price months ahead of time. When forward prices spike, it means the market is already betting on tight supply or high demand down the road. 
A unanimous Ohio Supreme Court has ordered the tiny Pickaway County village of Ashville to let voters decide the fate of a data center and natural gas power plant — a project the village council tried to fast-track by declaring it an “emergency” not subject to a public vote. The court didn’t buy it. But before opponents celebrate too hard, the ruling doesn’t guarantee a vote will actually happen this November — county election officials still get to decide whether the deal is even the kind of thing voters can weigh in on at all. 
PJM Interconnection and Dominion Energy are reviewing a July 22 event in Northern Virginia in which roughly 3,800 megawatts (MW) of data center load — the largest such disconnection in PJM’s history — unexpectedly ripped itself off the grid after a routine, correctly cleared transmission fault, forcing PJM operators to scramble to keep the grid stable. The event has reignited a fight over whether data centers, which are growing explosively across the PJM footprint (including Marcellus/Utica territory), need to be held to new “ride through” standards so they stop treating minor grid hiccups like five-alarm fires.