What the Ohio Permits Are Saying

By Stephen Clayman · August 20, 2026

Ohio Mineral Owners,

There are nine rigs running in the entire state of Ohio right now. Here is where they are:

Look at the last row.

Tuscarawas County has no rig running and the second most permits in the state. Sixteen permits approved in ninety days, more than Belmont, more than Monroe, more than Carroll and Harrison combined.

Twelve of those sixteen belong to EOG.

Permits come before rigs

This is the part worth internalizing if you own minerals in Ohio.

A permit is not a well. Plenty of permits expire without a hole ever being drilled, and I am not going to tell you otherwise. But the sequence almost never runs the other way. An operator does not move a rig into a county it has not permitted. So a county with a rig is a county whose story is already public, priced, and mailed. A county with permits and no rig is a county where the operator has shown its hand and the mail has not caught up.

Tuscarawas has 2,058 producing wells, which is the fourth most in Ohio, and only 20 wells that first produced since January 2023. That combination means the county is mostly old shallow production sitting on top of Utica rock that has barely been touched horizontally.

Now EOG is permitting it.

EOG is the most active operator in Ohio, by a distance

Across the state in the last ninety days:

EOG holds 29 of the 145 permits filed statewide, and three of the nine rigs. Nobody else is close on both counts. Following the Encino acquisition, EOG inherited a large northern position and has been working it deliberately rather than loudly.

If you own minerals in Tuscarawas, Carroll, Guernsey, Harrison, or Columbiana, EOG is very likely the name that will decide what your acreage is worth over the next few years. Learning to read what it files is more useful than reading what anyone says.

What this means if you get a letter

Offers follow rigs. They do not follow permits, because the people sending mail buy lists rather than read filings.

That gap is where owners get hurt, and it cuts in a direction most people do not expect. If you own in Tuscarawas and someone offers you a multiple of your last twelve months of royalty income, that arithmetic is looking at old shallow wells. It is not looking at twelve EOG permits, because an income multiple cannot see a permit. It has no term for undrilled Utica.

Two things to do before you answer anyone:

1. Find out what has been permitted in your section and the sections touching it. Ohio's permit records are public and free. We list where to look on our well records page, for Ohio and nineteen other states.
2. Ask the buyer to show you the undrilled locations they assigned to your tract, and the probability they used. If they will not break it out, they are pricing your check rather than your minerals.

The thing nobody tells Ohio owners

Ohio has two statutes that can take your minerals away from you while you are thinking about it: the Dormant Mineral Act and the Marketable Title Act. The Ohio Supreme Court has confirmed that a surface owner can use either route.

If nothing has been recorded in your name in decades, the correct first move is not to negotiate a price. It is to record a claim to preserve, because an interest you no longer own is worth nothing regardless of how many permits EOG files. We explain both statutes plainly in the Ohio mineral owner's guide, and we will look at your chain for free whether or not you ever sell us anything.

Where to read more

• Ohio mineral rights: the Dormant Mineral Act, the Marketable Title Act, and what they mean for you
• The Utica Shale, across Ohio and into Appalachian Pennsylvania and West Virginia
• County pages for Tuscarawas, Guernsey, Belmont, Carroll, Harrison, Columbiana, Monroe, Noble, Jefferson, and Washington
• How mineral rights are valued and when not to sell
• Got an offer letter?

Rig, permit, well 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 is general information rather than advice about your interest.