Jamison Cocklin

After a week-long investigation, state regulators on Friday said that two underground injection wells are the likely cause of a 2.1-magnitude earthquake recorded by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in northeast Ohio on Aug. 31, and ordered them to shut down ahead of a full investigation.

Gastar Exploration Inc has delivered on one of the earliest publicly announced tests from the Utica Shale in West Virginia, where its long-awaited Simms U-5H well in Marshall County has exceeded expectations with a 48-hour gross sales rate of 29.4 MMcf/d.

Appalachian pure-play Eclipse Resources Corp. said late Wednesday that production has started at two of its pads in Ohio’s Utica Shale, including the first in the company’s condensate type-curve area and another that provides an early read-through for other operators preparing to test Utica wells in West Virginia.

The Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) has awarded a Pennsylvania-based environmental consulting firm with a contract to coordinate and oversee a wide-ranging study for the analysis of methane in groundwater samples.

In an early test of last year’s Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that struck down parts of Act 13, a common pleas court judge has thrown out a conditional use permit issued by a township in Lycoming County that would have allowed drilling operations in a residential area.

Federal regulators late Tuesday announced a settlement with Trans Energy Inc. that could find the small Marcellus Shale pure-play explorer paying a $3 million penalty and millions more to restore streams and wetlands at 15 sites across West Virginia for violating the Clean Water Act (CWA).

A closer look at oil and gas production in Pennsylvania from January-June shows that new drilling, backlogged wells waiting on pipelines or completion and others likely to return to production after a period of inactivity will help drive volumes in the state to a new record by the end of the year.

Pennsylvania likely became a net natural gas exporter in late 2009, but growing supplies are still whetting the state’s appetite for more, according to an analysis by Pennsylvania State University’s Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research.

EQT Corp. and NextEra Energy Inc. unit NextEra US Gas Assets LLC on Tuesday launched a binding open season for their Mountain Valley Pipeline project after receiving more than 1.5 Bcf/d of firm capacity commitments during a nonbinding open season that ended in July.