Deep Utica Offers Big Dry Gas Potential as Tier 1 Marcellus Acreage Shrinks: DUG Appalachia Insights

      The deeper parts of the Utica-Point Pleasant dry gas play in Pennsylvania and West Virginia will become more important as time passes. These gas wells are truly huge, but deeper and more expensive to drill. One might compare them to the deeper Western Haynesville/Bossier play in Texas.

     New insight from oil & gas executives at the recent DUG Appalachia conference is considering the deep Utica to be a bigger part of the future of the Appalachian Basin region as it becomes the engine of U.S. LNG exports. The deep Utica play is not new but has been drilled sparsely due to expense, gas offtake capacity constraints, low natural gas prices, and availability of good Marcellus Tier 1 acreage. Early exploration efforts from 2014 onward have resulted in defining some of the play’s extents and production rates, which can be quite impressive. I believe the biggest well to date, at least by IP rate, remains EQT’s Scotts Run well drilled in Greene County, Pennsylvania, in 2014, which tested at an initial rate of 73MMCF/day. There were several other wells with IPs near or above 50MMCF/day. The 12-well pad that hosts the Scotts Run well has produced over 111 BCF of gas and is still producing over 2 BCF per year.  

     According to Huntley & Huntley’s Mike Hillebrand at the August 2025 DUG Appalachia conference, the deep Utica wells are “smoking” Marcellus RORs. That is saying a lot since Marcellus RORs are great. Early exploration showed that the high well production rates extend over a large area, overlapping the Southwestern part of the Marcellus Tier I and Tier II acreage. The extensive overlap provides unlimited opportunities for stacked pay pads and drainage. In some areas, the Burket/Geneseo Shale provides a third stacked pay. Early concerns were in drilling through hole-caving Salina Salts above the Utica and simply the greater well depths, roughly 9,000 to 14,000 ft, but often greater than 12,000 ft TVD. These challenges have been largely overcome. With years of production in the deep Utica, the economics are showing sustained production and low decline rates. Hillebrand also noted that “Huntley & Huntley, which recently completed the sale of its Olympus Energy subsidiary to EQT for $1.8 billion, is working on its next startup, which will focus on "deep Utica and Tier II Marcellus."

     As the graph below shows, the Marcellus is making about  ~77% of Appalachian production, with the Utica at ~23%.

     Of course, there is plenty of Tier I Marcellus acreage available now, but it won’t last forever. The increasing numbers of 20-year LNG offtake agreements being signed and planned between now and 2030 suggest that there will be a strong demand for Appalachian natural gas at least till 2050 and likely beyond then.

     CNX Resources has been drilling the deep Utica for several years now and is just beginning to drill and turn in line more and more wells. The COO of CNX Resources, Navneet Behl, reported during July’s earnings call that the Utica wells' performance is:

"…within our expectations and our latest TILs that we got in Q2 are slightly above our expectation. So we are really excited about the deep Utica play, and we look forward to kind of continuing to kind of get more wells in there."  

     They also report that Utica is economically competitive with the Marcellus, and plans are to continue drilling deep Utica. The company is also “waiting for concrete data center contracts before committing to long-term agreements.” These self-help gas contracts are expected to become more common for AI data centers, many of which are expected to be built in the Marcellus and deep Utica region in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. In late 2024, CNX paid just over $500 million for local operator Apex, which was drilling Marcellus and deep Utica in nearby Westmoreland County. It is a nice bolt-on acquisition for them.

     Utica production peaked in 2019, at 7.4 BCF per day. Production dropped to about 6 BCF/day in 2024. Utica production will likely rise as more LNG is sourced from the region. Incorrys’ forecast shown below has the Utica troughing to 5.6 BCF/day in 2028 and then rising gradually to 6.4 BCF/day by 2040. I believe that if more wells are drilled, longer wells are drilled, and more stack pay pads are drilled, production could exceed forecasts considerably, if the market is ripe for it. Incorrys’ forecasts for Utica EURS to drop a bit to 2030 may be off as well, especially if more deep Utica wells are drilled relative to the shallower Utica in Ohio. This will also depend on natural gas prices, oil prices, and NGL and other liquids prices. The first graph is Utica production in BCF/day. Graph 2 is IP rates. Graph 3 is EURs. 

     I remember going to a conference in Pittsburgh around 2011 or 2012 when Utica reserves were being tabulated. I remember that gas-in-place for all Utica and Marcellus zones was calculated to over 1000 TCF or 1 quadrillion cubic feet (QCF), with technically recoverable reserves much less and economically recoverable reserves even less. I enjoyed using the term QCF! 

     A 2017 study in the Journal of Sustainable Energy Engineering was focused on well spacing and production optimization. The paper gave the following reservoir parameters.

     A summer 2025 blog post by Ron Summers of Wright & Company explored development trends in the Marcellus and Utica in 2022, 2023, and 2024. Average Utica lateral lengths in 2024 are a little longer, about 14,400 ft vs. about 12,700 ft for Marcellus wells. Lateral length averages continue to increase, but maximums have not changed much and are not expected to increase much. Median frac stage spacing for the Utica is about 200 ft, similar to the Marcellus. Median proppant loading was about 2200 lbs/ft for both plays.

     A March 2025 paper in Geoenergy Science and Engineering studied Utica-Point Pleasant production and forecasting. The Utica-Point Pleasant has already produced about 20TCF and currently produces about 2 TCF per year. At that rate, cumulative production by 2035 would be about 40BCF, although the paper inexplicably predicts the EUR at 23 TCF by 2035. I am not sure what they mean there unless they are predicting production to drop or citing the metric in a different way. That does not include liquids production.

     Another deep Utica player was Olympus, which was acquired recently by EQT. CNX and Olympus drilled several deep Utica wells in the past several years. Other executives at the recent DUG Appalachia echoed the excitement for the deep Utica. One also noted that it may become a key source of future LNG. It will be needed for increased exports, especially after 2030. It seems likely that these two Appalachian formations will produce a few hundred TCF of gas by 2050.

     

 

     

References:

 

US E&Ps Drill Down on Dry Gas Potential of ‘Deep Utica’. Mark Davidson. Ed. Michael Sultan. Energy Intelligence. August 29, 2025. US E&Ps Drill Down on Dry Gas Potential of ‘Deep Utica’ | Energy Intelligence

Deep, Dry Utica: "Super" Gas Shale. (The Technology of Horizontal, Multistage Fracking Continues to Improve). ~ 2015. The Energy Consulting Group. Utica Super Shale Play:  Deep, dry Utica

Tug Hill Unlocks the Deep Utica in West Virginia. Keith Mauck. Gohaynesvilleshale.com. July 29, 2019. Tug Hill Unlocks the Deep Utica in West Virginia - GoHaynesvilleShale.com

Physics-based, data-driven production forecasting in the Utica and Point Pleasant Formation. Daniela Arias-Ortiz and Tadeusz W. Patzek. Geoenergy Science and Engineering. Volume 246, March 2025. Physics-based, data-driven production forecasting in the Utica and Point Pleasant Formation - ScienceDirect

DEVELOPMENT TRENDS IN THE MARCELLUS AND UTICA SHALES. Ron Summers. Wright & Company, Inc. June 16, 2025. DEVELOPMENT TRENDS IN THE MARCELLUS AND UTICA SHALES - Wright & Company, Inc

Utica Raw Natural Gas Production Forecast to 2040. Incorrys. February 12, 2025. Utica Raw Natural Gas Production Forecast to 2040

CNX Resources outlines $30M annual 45Z tax credit run rate opportunity amid drilling efficiency gains and steady activity. July, 24, 2025. Seeking Alpha. CNX Resources outlines $30M annual 45Z tax credit run rate opportunity amid drilling efficiency gains and steady activity (NYSE:CNX) | Seeking Alpha

Horizontal Well Spacing and Hydraulic Fracturing Design Optimization: A Case Study on Utica-Point Pleasant Shale Play. Alireza Shahkarami and Guochang Wang. Journal of Sustaainable Energy Engineering. Vol. 5, No. 2, July 2017. Horizontal_Well_Spacing_and_Hydraulic_Fracturing_D.pdf

CNX Announces Strategic Bolt-On Acquisition. Stock Titan. December 5, 2025. CNX Resources Expands Marcellus Footprint with $505M Apex Energy Acquisition, Adds 180 MMcfe/d Production | CNX Stock News