Antero Resources | Armstrong County | Belmont County | Carroll County | Energy Companies | Guernsey County | Gulfport Energy | Harrison County | INR/Infinity Natural Resources | JKLM Energy | Noble County | Ohio | Pennsylvania | Snyder Brothers | Tioga County (PA) | Tyler County | Weekly Permits | West Virginia | Wyoming County (PA)
Shale Permits Dip to 9 Last Week; Gulfport, Snyder Bros Lead the Way
The Marcellus/Utica region received 9 new shale well permits last week, Oct. 19 – 25, down 3 from 12 the week before. Pennsylvania issued 4 new permits, Ohio issued 4, and West Virginia issued 1. The drillers who received new-well permits last week were: Antero Resources, Gulfport, INR, JKLM Energy, and Snyder Brothers. It was a quieter week on the new-permit front. The busiest driller of all, EOG Resources, didn’t get a single permit for a brand-new well — but it did get seven permits to tweak wells it was already approved to drill in Ohio (more on that below). Read More “Shale Permits Dip to 9 Last Week; Gulfport, Snyder Bros Lead the Way”
Antero Resources, the biggest driller in West Virginia, pumped out a company-record 4.234 Bcfe/d (billion cubic feet equivalent per day) in 3Q26. That’s up 23% from a year ago. And Antero did it while shutting in more than 100 MMcfe/d of dry gas on purpose, because local prices got so bad that on some weekends in September and October, gas went for 60 to 65 cents. Antero plans to shut in even more gas in 4Q, so it lowered its 4Q forecast to 4.3 Bcfe/d. Back in July, it promised 4.4 to 4.5 Bcfe/d. The good news? Antero says prices for its natural gas liquids (NGLs), meaning propane, butane, and their cousins, have jumped about 50% since 3Q ended. And Antero hedges almost none of its NGLs, so it keeps nearly all of that gain. 
Antero Midstream (AM) has a new pipeline on the drawing board. During Thursday’s 3Q26 earnings call, CEO Michael Kennedy said AM wants to build a North-South pipeline from Antero Resources’ West Virginia field north to the Clarington, Ohio, market. Kennedy said AM is “scoping it right now” and spending “a little initial capital” to assess it, and that “you’ll probably see us FID that in 2027.” (FID means final investment decision, the point where a company commits to build.) There was no press release. The news came out in answer to a question from a Goldman Sachs analyst. 
CNX Resources released its third-quarter 2026 update yesterday, and the short version goes like this: production dipped a bit, in-basin gas prices were ugly (below $1 at times), but CNX’s big hedge book kept the cash flowing. The company posted its 27th straight quarter of free cash flow, raised its full-year cash forecast, and kept spending most of that cash buying back its own stock. CEO Alan Shepard says CNX will stay in “maintenance mode” heading into 2027—but he also delivered a line we’ll be quoting for a while: “every drop here in Appalachia is going to get developed.” Here’s what’s in the numbers for landowners, competitors, the supply chain, and investors. 
Shell CEO Wael Sawan had warm words yesterday for the company’s Beaver County ethane cracker plant, calling it “the 800-pound asset” in Shell’s chemicals business and saying it has been performing very, very well. Then, in the same breath, he repeated what he’s been saying for more than a year: Shell is not the “natural owner” of chemical assets, and it is in “deep discussions” to sell or partner them, with news expected in the coming months. Sawan’s comments came during Shell’s third-quarter 2026 earnings call. There’s one new wrinkle. If Shell can’t get the price it wants, the more likely outcome may be folding its chemicals business into someone else’s and keeping a minority stake, rather than selling outright. We read through the call transcript and Shell’s 3Q documents to see what they tell us about Monaca and the chemicals division. 
Spain’s Repsol, which picked up a big chunk of PA’s northern tier Marcellus when it bought Talisman Energy in 2015, released its third-quarter 2026 update yesterday. We read all four documents: the press release, the 37-page results report, the investor slide deck, and the earnings call transcript. The Marcellus gets exactly one sentence. But it’s a good sentence: more gas is flowing from Repsol’s Marcellus wells. The call also included a few comments from CEO Josu Jon Imaz that Repsol landowners, competing drillers, service companies, and investors will want to hear. 
Big Green group FracTracker Alliance, with partner Buckeye Environmental Network (BEN), has released a new report claiming Ohio logged 2,529 oil and gas “incidents” from 2015 through 2025, and that incidents are “rising” while oversight is “lax.” The Ohio Capital Journal ran with the big number without checking it. But here’s the thing: if you actually read FracTracker’s own charts (we did, all 31 pages), they tell a very different story. Shale wells account for less than 8% of the incidents. Serious incidents fell more than 80%. And the “rise” is almost entirely in records that state regulators didn’t even rate as “minor.” Let’s set the record straight…
Round two. A month after FERC accepted PJM Interconnection’s one-time “emergency” power auction for data centers and then froze it for five months (see 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Residents evacuated after truck transporting LNG overturns in Wysox; Well Done Foundation plugs 15 PA orphan wells, a $2.25M taxpayer win; Pitt aims to become a national leader in energy research and solutions; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: US closes $5.1B loan to Alliant Energy for new gas power generation, energy storage; NextDecade provides third quarter 2026 business update (Rio Grande LNG); Amazon walked away from $427M data center plan after neighbors fought back; Owners pull the plug on proposed $1B natural gas plant in northern Wisconsin; Vineland residents plan to sue data center over unpermitted natural gas engines; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas futures fall on mild weather outlook; What would a midterm Democrat sweep mean for usa oil, gas?; Granholm’s permitting warning to Trump and fellow Democrats; What is on the horizon for the 2026/2027 natural gas withdrawal season?; INTERNATIONAL: Oil wavers on conflicting reports of USA military moves; QatarEnergy secures 20-year US LNG supply from Woodside amid Hormuz blockade; QatarEnergy buys US, other LNG to hedge future Hormuz disruptions; LNG imports make up increasing share of Colombia’s natural gas supply. 
Expand Energy, the nation’s largest natural gas producer (for now, anyway), released its third quarter 2026 update on Tuesday and held its earnings call on Wednesday. It was new CEO Danny Brown’s third day on the job. Expand produced 7.54 Bcfe/d (billion cubic feet equivalent per day) in 3Q, up 2.8% from a year ago. Net income came in at $519 million ($2.24/share), down from $547 million ($2.28/share) in 3Q25. But adjusted net income, which strips out hedging paper gains and one-time items, jumped 44% to $338 million ($1.46/share). Expand’s Northeast PA operations were deliberately throttled back (“curtailed”) because in-basin prices stunk, and those curtailments are carrying into 4Q. Below we sort out what matters for landowners, competitors, the supply chain, and investors. 
In June, we told you that 194 landowners in Salem Township (Luzerne County, near Berwick) were lining up to become AI millionaires by selling their land for a giant new data center project (see 
Wall Street’s hedge funds have placed their biggest bet against natural gas prices in more than six years. They’re wagering that a “Super El Niño” will give the U.S. a warm, wimpy winter and leave way too much gas sitting in storage. They may be right. But the last time hedge funds loaded up on the short side of gas heading into winter (this past January!), Mother Nature handed them their heads. 
The Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) is leading a three-state push by Appalachian drillers to get the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA, S. 5653) over the finish line. The timing is no accident. When the U.S. Senate returns from its campaign break on Monday, November 9, the first thing it will do is take a make-or-break procedural vote on this permitting reform bill. Here’s where things stand: who’s lined up for it, who’s lined up against it, and why a bill about paperwork matters to every landowner and driller in the Marcellus/Utica. 
In August, MDN told you about two federal lawsuits, filed six days apart by Big Green groups, aimed at killing Nationwide Permit 12 (NWP 12). That’s the Army Corps of Engineers permit that lets pipelines cross streams and wetlands without a separate federal review at every single crossing (see