Natural gas production in Ohio’s Utica Shale remains centered in Belmont and Monroe counties.
Belmont County is No. 1 with 99.2 billion cubic feet, according to Ohio Department of Natural Resources records for the first quarter 2016. Monroe is No. 2 with 63.3 billion cubic feet of natural gas.
Those two counties are in what’s known as the dry gas window and produce high volumes of pressurized natural gas that need little processing. They are home to Ohio’s biggest wells and have emerged as Ohio’s drilling hot spot.
Nine of the top 10 natural gas-producing wells in Ohio are in Belmont County. The other is in Monroe.
Ohio’s top-producing well for natural gas is Mohawk Warrior 12-H drilled by Rice Energy in Smith Township in Belmont County. It produced 1.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas in the quarter. It was also Ohio’s top gas well in fourth quarter 2015.
Two other Mohawk Warrior wells at that site were No. 2 and No. 3 for natural gas production.
Belmont’s natural gas volume grew by 13.4 billion cubic feet from fourth quarter 2015 totals that were released last March.  Monroe County jumped past Carroll County to No. 2 with an additional 14 billion cubic feet.
Carroll County is third with 56.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas in the first quarter. Its gas production dipped slightly: from 59.4 to 56.7 billion cubic feet. It was the Ohio county where Utica wells were drilled.
Fourth is Harrison County with 44.1 billion cubic feet. Fifth is Noble County with 34.2 billion cubic feet.
For oil, the Top 5 Ohio counties are: Harrison, 2.2 million barrels; Carroll, 1,3 million barrels; Guernsey, 1.2 million barrels; Noble, 537,325 barrels; and Belmont, 104,065 barrels.
The top oil well was in Noble County’s Seneca Township with 57,160 42-gallon barrels. It was drilled by Antero Resources.
The top Ohio counties for wells are Carroll, 429; Harrison, 257; Belmont, 174; Monroe, 134; Noble, 116. Locally, Portage has four wells and Stark has two.
The Top 5 Ohio drillers are: Chesapeake Energy, 608 wells; Gulfport Energy, 180 wells; Antero Resources, 129 wells; Ascent Resources, 84 wells; and Eclipse Resources and Hess (tie), 54 wells.
The new quarterly data, released last week by ODNR’s Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management, oil production from Ohio’s Utica Shale dipped for the first time, due to low commodity prices and less drilling.
It dropped 12.3 percent from the previous quarter. It totaled 5.48 million barrels. Natural gas production grew by 24 percent in the quarter. Gas production totaled 329.5 billion cubic feet. That data tracked results from 1,302 Utica wells.
Ohio does not require a separate reporting of natural gas liquids like ethane, butane and propane or condensate, a type of oil.   The NGLs are part of the natural gas total. The condensate is part of the oil total.
The individual well reports are available at http://oilandgas.ohiodnr.gov/production.