Jamison Cocklin

Little changed for Appalachian pure-play operator Antero Resources Corp. during the first three months of the year, as production continued to steadily climb and the company kept realizing strong natural gas prices as the result of cold weather and its sharp focus on firm transportation.

Range Resources Corp. has earned the cooperation of Allegheny County, PA, to drill for natural gas underneath the 1,180 acre Deer Lakes Park, about 20 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.

Gulfport Energy Corp. on Thursday announced a drastic shift in its strategy to develop the Utica Shale, defying expectations and scaling-back its drilling and completion plans in favor of a slower approach aimed at long-term growth that found analysts on edge and sent the company’s stock plummeting.

PDC Energy Inc. continued to deliver results in its core areas of Colorado’s Wattenberg Field and Ohio’s Utica Shale last quarter by nearly doubling production and once again boosting its liquids mix, but legal fees, commodity prices and processing constraints cut into profits and limited gains at the same time.

For the third time in a year, voters in Youngstown, OH, on Tuesday rejected a referendum calling for a charter amendment that would have banned horizontal hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and related industrial activity within city limits.

In response to requests from Appalachian producers, MarkWest Energy Partners LP on Tuesday said it would add another 400 MMcf/d of rich gas processing capacity by building two cryogenic plants at existing facilities serving Marcellus Shale production in West Virginia.

A rally organized by the Marcellus Shale Coalition to tout the benefits of shale gas development in Pennsylvania, attracted more than 2,500 participants, according to estimates from the capital police force in Harrisburg, PA, where the rally took place on Tuesday. It was one of the largest rallies the capital has seen in years, police officials said. Before the event, the MSC, which represents hundreds of exploration and production companies, midstream operators and supply chain businesses throughout the state, said the rally would be the largest in its roughly six-year history (see Shale Daily,May 1). A spokesman for the organization said business leaders, local government officials and residents from communities across the state had signed up. Many of the participants were bused to the capital and then marched to the stairs of the statehouse to voice their support for the industry as it faces headwinds from environmentalists and policy proposals calling for increased taxes on production. Local news media reports said dozens of people participated in a small counter-protest. No clashes between the two groups were reported.

A close analysis of Pennsylvania production data by Barclays Capital shows that Marcellus operators are more focused on the state’s southwest wet gas window, indicating that, for now, the stubborn number of backlogged wells in the northeast’s dry-gas window is likely to remain high.

The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS), in its latestreport that tracks economic trends in the state’s oil and gas industry, found that employment in core shale-related fields, such as pipeline construction and well drilling, increased by nearly 80% from 3Q2011 to 3Q2013.