WTI: $57.96. Link here.
New wells reporting: link here.
RBN Energy: link here. A drill down report on Marcellus/Utica gas production and pipeline egress.
Appalachia is churning out 36 Bcf/d of natural gas, or just over one-third of Lower 48 production, and the region has the potential to produce considerably more — if demand warrants and sufficient takeaway infrastructure is in place. The big question for Appalachia E&Ps as 2025 draws to a close is whether their collective gas output will finally break out from the rangebound volumes they’ve been producing through the first half of this decade. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss highlights from our new Drill Down Report on Marcellus/Utica gas supply, demand and pipeline egress.
The Shale Revolution changed everything in the Northeast U.S. In the 2010s, Marcellus/Utica natural gas production increased from less than 2 Bcf/d to a staggering 33 Bcf/d, and the region flipped from being heavily dependent on piped-in gas from the Gulf Coast, the Midcon, the Rockies and Canada to a gas-production powerhouse. Not only was Appalachia suddenly producing enough gas to meet the Northeast’s needs, but midstream companies were scrambling to add new pipeline capacity to transport many billions of cubic feet of Marcellus/Utica gas a day to the Midwest, the Southeast and the Gulf Coast itself.
As shown in Figure 1 below, gas production in the broader Appalachia region (Marcellus/Utica plus other, much smaller production areas) has been hovering between 34 Bcf/d and 36 Bcf/d through the first half of the 2020s. Of the current ~35 Bcf/d of Marcellus/Utica production, about 11 Bcf/d comes out of the dry Marcellus in northeastern Pennsylvania and the other 24 Bcf/d comes out of the wet Marcellus/Utica: ~10 Bcf/d from northern West Virginia, ~9 Bcf/d from southwestern Pennsylvania and ~5 Bcf/d from eastern Ohio. (RBN estimates that more than 1 MMb/d of NGLs is currently being “recovered” — that is, not “rejected” into natural gas for its Btu value — in the wet Marcellus/Utica, more than 400 Mb/d in both southwestern Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia and more than 200 Mb/d in eastern Ohio.
