St. Clairsville, Barnesville, Bellaire. Ohio's dry gas core, where Ascent and Gulfport have brought 100 wells online since January 2023 and the units are large enough that a small decimal still pays.
Belmont County is Ohio's gas giant, and the numbers behind that reputation are current rather than historical. 100 wells first produced here since January 2023, and there are two rigs turning and fifteen permits approved in the last ninety days, third most in the state.
Of those 100 recent wells, Ascent Resources drilled 53 and Gulfport 39. EQT added five and Tiburon three.
For Utica purposes Belmont is effectively an Ascent and Gulfport county, and that has a practical consequence: your interest will almost certainly be administered by one of them, and their unit designs and development pace determine your timing far more than anything you can influence.
The county's roughly 817 producing wells include a large shallow legacy population that has nothing to do with the Utica. Do not read a high total well count as a sign your tract is developed.
This is the Belmont-specific error worth naming, because we see it repeatedly.
Utica units here are large, and the wells are high-rate. That combination means a decimal which looks like a rounding error on paper can attach to a genuinely significant volume of gas.
Owners inherit a fraction of a fraction, look at a number with five zeros after the decimal point, and conclude it is not worth the trouble of the paperwork. Sometimes that is right. In Belmont it is wrong more often than in any other Ohio county we buy in.
Before you dismiss a small Belmont decimal, find out what the whole unit is producing. We will look it up and tell you, free, and we will tell you if the honest answer is that it really is not worth much.
Belmont sits in the dry gas window. There is no condensate uplift here of the kind Guernsey and Columbiana owners see, so headline revenue per well can look thinner.
That does not make a Belmont royalty worth less than a liquids-rich one of the same size. It makes it a different asset. These wells are high-rate and long-lived, and a long-lived gas stream is priced off the forward curve, not the spot headline. Those two numbers frequently point in opposite directions, and LNG export and power generation demand move the long end far more than any given month's price does.
An offer built on a spot price for a twenty-year asset is not conservative. It is simply wrong, and it is wrong in a direction that benefits whoever wrote it. Ask for the deck.
The Marcellus reaches its western limit around Belmont. On some acreage here it is a real second bench that has never been drilled. On other acreage there is not enough thickness to be worth anything.
That distinction is worth establishing before you sell, because an undrilled bench is a separate location that an income-multiple offer values at zero, and a bench that is not there is something a buyer should not be implying you have. We will tell you which you own.
Ohio's Dormant Mineral Act and Marketable Title Act each give a surface owner a route to take a severed mineral interest, and the Ohio Supreme Court has confirmed both work. Activity in the county does not protect you from either.
If nothing has been recorded in your name in decades, record a claim to preserve before you negotiate anything. We will pull your chain free, whether or not you ever sell us anything. See the Ohio mineral owner's guide.
Well, rig, permit and operator counts are sourced from Enverus and current as of August 2026. Berlin Royalties is a mineral buyer and a landman shop in Tulsa, not a law firm or a tax advisor, and this page is general information rather than advice about your interest.
The deepest and hottest part of the Ohio Utica, and the most productive gas rock in the state. Belmont wells are high-rate, long-lived and almost purely methane, which changes how they should be valued.
Present but thin here, at the far western edge of its extent. On some Belmont acreage it is a genuine second bench that no income-based offer accounts for, and on much of it there is not enough thickness to matter. It is worth knowing which you have.
Clinton and Berea wells drilled long before anyone considered the Utica. Most of Belmont's roughly 817 producing wells are shallow rather than horizontal.
Wherever your tract sits in Belmont County, we will research it free and value it with the work shown.
We buy in every Ohio county, including ones without a page here. See the full county index or the Ohio overview.
Everything a Ohio owner needs in one place: who owns what under state law, how royalties must be paid and by when, what a buyer can and cannot deduct, the tax treatment of a sale, and the deadlines that quietly cost people their minerals. Free, and no sign-up.
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