Utica

Some of Pennsylvania’s leading private and public sector economic development organizations are stepping-up their efforts to expand markets for natural gas in the state as the upstream and midstream booms of years past are increasingly giving way to more downstream opportunities.

A special interest group in Ohio has released a report detailing what it believes must be done to improve the state’s energy competitiveness, highlighting a plan that would require an even stronger focus on building and promoting shale gas resources.

The commodities downturn showed itself on Thursday when second quarter unconventional production data released by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) showed that sequential natural gas production in the state was essentially flat and oil production dropped for the second consecutive quarter.

The buildout of gathering infrastructure in the Utica Shale’s dry natural gas window of Southeast Ohio has remained robust over the last year as the midstream has worked to stay ahead of, and in some cases fallen behind, operators that have flooded a three-county region.

FERC has issued an environmental assessment (EA) for a trio of projects to enable Texas Eastern Transmission LP (Tetco) to transport up to an additional 662,000 Dth/d of natural gas from the Marcellus and Utica shales on its mainline from Pennsylvania to points in Ohio, Kentucky and Mississippi.

National Fuel Gas Co.’s (NFG) exploration and production subsidiary, Seneca Resources Corp., is opening yet another frontier for Utica Shale development in Northwest Pennsylvania, saying the formation could ultimately be its primary target in a few years after encouraging test results in the region.

Utica Shale heavyweight Gulfport Energy Corp. is getting ready to come off the sidelines, offering a bullish assessment Thursday on the natural gas market that has it pivoting from what management thought would be a year of activity reductions to setting up for a six to eight-rig program in 2017.

The Upper Devonian and Utica shales contributed meaningfully for the first time to Pennsylvania’s natural gas output in 2015, according to an annual oil and gas report that was released on Monday by the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).

Nearly a year after the company said it would suspend its Upper Devonian Shale drilling in favor of the deep, dry Utica, EQT Corp. is reviving the program, with management saying on Thursday that it’s a “use it or lose it play.”