YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – After realizing strong oil and gas production results across eastern Ohio’s Utica/Point Pleasant shale play in Carroll, Harrison and Columbiana counties, Encino Energy is inching its position northward.

The Houston-based energy company is now actively drilling its first horizontal well in Mahoning County. The well is also the first one targeting the Utica/Point Pleasant drilled in the county in more than 10 years, records show.

Encino spokeswoman Jackie Stewart confirmed that the well is the company’s first in Mahoning County. She could not provide any additional details.

Crews were busy on a rig that recently moved to a site on the Wehr Spring Valley Farm off the corner of Leffingwell Road and state Route 45 in Ellsworth Township Monday morning. The initial well is part of a larger pad that could potentially hold 12 horizontal wells, signaling a rekindled interest in an area that was earlier written off by other companies as nonproductive.

However, Encino over the past several years has helped rewrite the narrative of the northern Utica/Point Pleasant. Columbiana County – long understood to be a wealth of dry and wet gas – has over the past two years become a powerful oil producer, driven entirely by Encino’s wells.

Last year, horizontal wells in Columbiana County collectively produced nearly 1.5 million barrels of oil, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. The previous year, the county’s wells yielded 970,936 barrels, according to ODNR.

All the oil-producing wells in Columbiana County are owned by Encino, the largest oil producer in Ohio, records show. In 2024, the company’s wells produced 16.5 million barrels of oil, or 48% of the entire state’s output, ODNR data show.

Columbiana County also produced 25.1 billion cubic feet of natural gas during the fourth quarter of 2024. Aside from Encino, three other energy companies – Hilcorp Energy Co., Pin Oak Energy Partners and Geopetro LLC – operate wells in the county.

Taking a Chance on Mahoning County

Conversely, wells in Mahoning County have proven less productive when compared with the rich returns from those in the southeastern part of the state and just south into Columbiana County, records show.

Indeed, just 12 wells are active in Mahoning County, compared with 185 in Columbiana County, ODNR data show. The most recent of these wells was placed into production in February 2015, more than 10 years ago, records show.

Generally, horizontal wells in Mahoning County have, to this point, failed to produce large quantities of oil or gas, according to ODNR production figures.

In 2024, for example, wells in the county produced approximately 4,000 barrels of oil and 767.2 million cubic feet of natural gas. This production is dominated by three companies – Hilcorp, Pin Oak and Northwood Energy Corp.

The first of these wells put into service was Hilcorp’s Poland CLL1 in Poland Township on May 31, 2013, just as energy companies swarmed the region in search of Utica/Point Pleasant shale oil and gas. Hilcorp drilled six more wells at the site the following year and has not drilled a new well in Mahoning County since. The company ceased its drilling program at the site after a small earthquake was detected during a hydraulic fracturing operation.

Last year, Hilcorp’s Poland wells yielded 624.7 million cubic feet of gas and no oil.

Initially, the wells owned by Northwood were drilled by CNX Corp. in 2014 and 2015. CNX commissioned three wells – one in Ellsworth Township and Jackson Township in 2014 and a third in Jackson Township in 2015.

These wells together produced 3,224 barrels of oil and 89.1 million cubic feet of natural gas in 2024.

Pin Oak operates two wells in Jackson Township that were first drilled in 2014 by Halcon Operating Co. Last year, those wells produced just 781 barrels of oil and 53.3 million cubic feet of natural gas, according to ODNR figures.

Wells drilled further north in Trumbull County have also shown poor production. In 2014, energy giant BP abandoned its plans to develop the region after test wells revealed less-than-impressive results.