Ohio Utica play’s natural gas find stays on rising path

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Natural gas drilling this summer yielded four times more than energy companies produced a year earlier.

Tom Knox

Reporter- Columbus Business First

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Natural gas production in Ohio's Utica play quadrupled this summer from a year earlier, outpacing the percentage increase in operating wells, a state report shows.

Ohio drillers told the state they produced 132 billion cubic feet of natural gas from July to September, up from 33 billion cubic feet a year earlier. Gas production has steadily risen this year, the report said, from 88.7 billion cubic feet the prior quarter and 67.3 billion from January to March.

Meanwhile, the number of producing wells has nearly tripled in a year, to 674 now from 248 a year ago, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources reports.

But there is less oil being pulled by horizontal drilling from the play, though production still increased nearly 550,000 barrels to 3 million in the summer from 2.5 million barrels in the prior quarter, department records show. Energy companies have consistently found less oil in the Utica fields, but oil production also has generally declined in big oil-production regions because its prices have plummeted this year.

As Ohio drillers extract more gas they'll also see yet another pipeline to use for shipping it. Federal regulators this week approved construction of a $469 million pipeline project in eastern Ohio, as I reported.