Permits Climb to 21; EQT and Coterra Each Grab 7 in Pennsylvania
The Marcellus/Utica region received 21 new shale well permits last week, Nov. 2 – 8, up 17 from the paltry 4 the week before. Pennsylvania issued 15 new permits, Ohio issued 5, and West Virginia issued 1. The drillers who received new-well permits last week were: Antero Resources, CNX, Coterra (now Devon Energy), EOG, and EQT. Now that’s more like it! Pennsylvania did the heavy lifting, with EQT and Coterra each grabbing seven permits for a single pad. And as we predicted last week, Ohio’s goose egg didn’t last: EOG picked up five new-well permits on Nov. 5. On the paperwork side, there were 14 actions on older permits, nine of them for one EQT pad in Wetzel County, W.Va. Read More “Permits Climb to 21; EQT and Coterra Each Grab 7 in Pennsylvania”
West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey used yesterday’s annual Governor’s Energy Summit in Charleston to drop a whopper: Appalachian Power (APCo), a subsidiary of Columbus, Ohio-based American Electric Power (AEP), will spend $17 billion to build three new natural gas-fired power plants in the Mountain State, adding 3 gigawatts (GW) of new generating capacity by 2031. APCo also pledged another $7.5 billion to keep its West Virginia coal plants running through 2050. That’s $24.5 billion in all. The governor’s office calls the gas piece the largest single power generation announcement by capacity in state history, edging out the ~2.9 GW John Amos coal plant announced in the early 1970s. A lot of Marcellus/Utica gas is about to start burning right where it’s produced. But there are some big unanswered questions, too. 
Welcome to the first edition of MDN’s Pipeline Outage Watch, a new weekly roundup of pipeline problems that can bottle up Marcellus/Utica gas. This week’s biggest squeeze is on Eastern Gas Transmission & Storage (EGTS, formerly Dominion Transmission). Since Nov. 7, EGTS has limited how much gas it will take in at points south of its Valley Gate area, and since Nov. 10 at points north of it too. EGTS cited operating conditions and limits on how much gas it can push into storage. Over on Columbia Gas Transmission, the receipt cap at DT Midstream’s Stonewall Gas Gathering interconnect in Braxton County, WV, keeps creeping back up, to 1,007,000 Dth/d as of Nov. 10. Mountain Valley Pipeline spent the whole week (Nov. 9-13) at reduced capacity, 1,760,000 Dth/d, for maintenance at its Harris Compressor Station. Texas Eastern is trimming southbound firm gas at Danville, KY, by about 9-14%, and Transco had a one-day hiccup on its southbound mainline. Rover, NEXUS, and Millennium were quiet. 
PPL Corporation, the Allentown, PA-based utility, has another natural gas-fired power plant planned for Kentucky. On its third-quarter earnings call last Friday (Nov. 6), PPL raised its four-year capital plan to $25 billion. That’s $2 billion more than the old plan, and most of the increase is for a new 645-megawatt (MW) combined-cycle gas plant to be built by its Kentucky subsidiaries, Louisville Gas and Electric (LG&E) and Kentucky Utilities (KU). The new unit, which still needs state approval, would start running in the second quarter of 2032. It would be the fourth new gas-fired combined-cycle plant LG&E and KU have planned since 2022. CEO Vince Sorgi made it clear he doesn’t expect it to be the last one. 
Nine Energy Service, the Houston-based oilfield services company that went through a quick prepackaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this year, issued its third-quarter 2026 results on Nov. 9 and held its earnings call on Nov. 10. Our first question was whether Nine still does much work in our neck of the woods. The answer is yes. According to the company’s new investor presentation, the Marcellus/Utica brought in 21% of Nine’s 2025 revenue, roughly $118 million. That makes our region Nine’s second-biggest market, behind only the Permian (41%) and well ahead of the Eagle Ford (13%) and Haynesville (12%). 
Every so often someone sends us a graphic so good we just have to share it. This is one of those times. 
The Pew Charitable Trusts has issued a press release and two Pew-funded studies claiming Ohio and Pennsylvania could “unlock” up to 37.5 gigawatts (GW) of new electricity quickly and cheaply by piggybacking on the grid connections of existing power plants. Sounds great, right? Read the fine print. Every one of those 37.5 GW is solar, wind, or batteries, much of it parked at gas-fired power plants. And bolted onto the back of both studies is a Democrat policy wish list: mandates, set-asides, subsidy multipliers and an override of local control. Same old playbook, new name. We’re calling it out. 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Hope Gas is working to fuel West Virginia’s economy; Kyuden inks long-term O&M deal for 4.4 GW Homer City Energy campus; 2026 quarterly ‘State of the Market’ report for PJM – Jan through Sep; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Gulf Coast LPG trade absorbs dual terminal outages; Venture Global asks DOE for approval to re-export LNG from CP2 project; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas futures extend gains; Trump administration announces new plan to sell public lands; Project InnerSpace launches for-profit arm to attract O&G to geothermal projects; American politicians make a splash at COP31; New Anthropic job listing offers $405,000 to land natgas for post-IPO data center buildout; A world without hydrocarbons is a past we escaped; Expect more talk from Congress but less action; INTERNATIONAL: Oil rises as Trump dims Iran deal hopes; Saudi oil production surges to one of highest levels in years; Analyst flags oil’s biggest threat; Global power grid expansion surges 50% to record high; Pathway exists for Canada to become 3rd largest LNG exporter; Iran says tanker carrying LNG hit mine, suffered explosion in Hormuz. 
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its November Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) on Tuesday, and the news for gas prices is, well, more of the same. A warm start to November means less gas burned for heat, more gas left in storage, and lower prices. EIA now expects the Henry Hub spot price to average $2.87 per MMBtu (million British thermal units) from November through March, 16% less than it predicted just a month ago. EIA also cut its 2027 price forecast by 28 cents. Meanwhile, Appalachian drillers keep working down their stockpile of drilled-but-uncompleted wells (DUCs) at a startling pace. The count has fallen below 500 for the first time since 2022. And because we still miss EIA’s old Drilling Productivity Report, our “DPR Replacement” section is back this month, with all four charts. 
The Delaware Riverkeeper’s war against permits for a pipeline that’s already built and flowing gas has hit another brick wall. On Nov. 10, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit refused to rehear a case the Riverkeeper lost in October over Pennsylvania permits for Williams’ Transco Regional Energy Access Expansion (REAE) project. That’s three straight losses for Big Green in this fight, and the October ruling the court left standing is “precedential,” meaning it binds future cases. It’s a big win for pipeline builders, and it may be an even bigger one for anyone tired of radicals waving Pennsylvania’s Environmental Rights Amendment around. 
Remember Ohio Senate Bill (SB) 294? We told you about it more than a year ago (see 
Remember when “the evil BlackRock” (MDN’s words) bought the Portland Natural Gas Transmission System (PNGTS) back in 2024 (see 
Venture Global (VG), the Louisiana LNG exporter and one of the biggest buyers of natural gas in the country, reported its third-quarter 2026 results earlier this week. The numbers were the company’s best ever: $2.6 billion in adjusted EBITDA, $4.8 billion in revenue, and 124 LNG cargoes shipped. For Marcellus/Utica readers, two items stand out. First, VG is paying a premium to get enough gas into its Plaquemines plant, which is fed by two pipelines that carry Northeast supply. Second, VG wants to add a new business: off-grid, gas-fired “AI utility” power for data centers. If it all gets built, that could mean well over a Bcf/d of new gas demand. 
Chesapeake Utilities Corporation (CPK) released its third-quarter 2026 update last week. (Not to be confused with the old Chesapeake Energy, now Expand Energy.) CPK is a Delaware-based utility that sells natural gas across the Delmarva Peninsula. That gas reaches Delmarva on CPK’s own interstate pipeline, Eastern Shore Natural Gas (ESNG), which picks it up in southeastern Pennsylvania from Transco, Texas Eastern (TETCO) and Columbia Gas Transmission, all of which have ready access to Marcellus/Utica supply. CPK also runs pipelines in Ohio. The quarterly numbers were solid: net income rose 11%. For the M-U region, the news includes a new $75 million ESNG expansion (covered in a separate post on Tuesday), a Delmarva LNG storage facility that’s nearly done but $25 million pricier, and progress on CPK’s Ohio pipeline to a data center.