YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Albin Dearing recalls a period during the 1980s when his father’s company, Dearing Compressor & Pump – then located on Andrews Avenue in Youngstown – faced some trying and unpredictable times.
“When I graduated from high school in 1986, this company was in dire straits,” he says. The bottom had fallen out of the oil and gas market, customers were going bankrupt and Dearing Compressor, which produces components and compressor equipment for the industry, was hanging on by a thread.
But hang on it did. Down to about 15 employees, Dearing says the market began to slowly claw its way back. “We were doing engine-driven compressors and got the company going again,” he says.
Then, about 20 years ago, as gas and oil prices started to rise, the company’s fortunes improved even more.
Such are the ups and downs of the oil and gas business, says Dearing, today the company’s president. No one, however, was prepared for what happened next.
“Then, the shale stuff hit,” Dearing says. “It was a game changer.”
Energy companies, using the technique of horizontal drilling combined with hydraulic fracturing, had figured out by the 1980s how to tap into tight, thin shale formations where hydrocarbons had been trapped for millions of years. By 2006, these companies began exploring in earnest the Marcellus shale, a rock formation that covers much of western Pennsylvania. In 2010, firms moved into eastern Ohio to drill the Utica/Point Pleasant formation.
“We went from about 40 employees to 200,” Dearing says. Moreover, the business allowed the company to expand its capabilities and secure business from across the country, he says. “Now we’re competing with the big boys.”
The company employs approximately 215 people today – a full recovery from the pandemic years, Dearing says.
Product Lines
Dearing Compressor designs and manufactures compressor packages for three major business lines. The company, now at 3974 Simon Road in Boardman, serves the carbon dioxide compressor market the renewable natural gas market, and the traditional midstream gas transportation market, Dearing says.
“Our machines go everywhere,” he says. Most of the company’s carbon dioxide compressors serve customers in Nebraska where most ethane fuel manufacturing plants are located, Dearing says. These machines capture carbon emissions from the ethane plants, compress the gas, then send it along a pipeline west to Wyoming. That gas is then used by energy companies drilling in the field to help extract oil and gas.
“That business was very strong last year,” Dearing says. “It’s still strong.”
The company’s renewable natural gas processors are shipped throughout the country, Dearing says. This equipment captures and compresses natural gas derived from landfills and animal husbandry operations. And the company president observes that the traditional midstream business – that is, compressor and pipeline infrastructure needed to move natural gas – is starting to improve.
“We engineer the package,” Dearing says. “Customers come to us with their volume and pressure requirements, and we design the package around that.”
The skids used to support these large processors are fabricated at Dearing, as well as some of the piping and other components. The actual compressor motors are manufactured at Aerial Corp. in Mount Vernon, Ohio.
The company also manufactures trailers that house systems that processes compressed natural gas used as fuel for drilling operations in the field, Dearing says. “It takes ‘dirty’ gas from the well, cleans it, and compresses it into CNG [compressed natural gas] to run these machines,” he says.
Dearing says that 2024 was a strong year for overall business, with orders overflowing well into 2025. Recently, the company invested approximately $900,000 in a robotic pipe cutter that adds automation to the 80-year-old company. “It reduces labor hours by days,” he says.
However, Dearing says he has noticed a slowdown that could affect business during the third quarter, given the lead times required to manufacture and assemble these compressor packages.
That should rebound by the end of the year, Dearing says, as there are indications that the company’s order book will fill up quickly by the fourth quarter. “Customers are now talking about buying production slots,” he says. “It’s indicative of the market really taking off. It means they’ll be fighting for capacity.”
Business Booms in the Utica
Meanwhile, oil and natural gas production across eastern Ohio’s Utica/Point Pleasant shale formation is demonstrating more resilience than ever, most notably in the oil window, data show.
Known for the abundance of natural gas trapped within the shale formation, The Utica/Point Pleasant has also emerged as an important oil producer that has commanded the attention of the industry on a global scale.
In 2024, Ohio’s 3,554 horizontal wells produced a total of 34.5 million barrels of oil drawn from the Utica/Point Pleasant – a 24% increase from the previous year.
Among the most prolific producers is EAP Ohio LLC, a subsidiary of Houston-based Encino Energy, which has offices in Carroll County, among the hottest areas for oil production in the state.
“The production results continue to prove that Ohio has a world-class oil and natural gas play that is economic and competing with the best wells in the country,” says Jackie Stewart, spokeswoman for Encino Energy.
EAP Ohio operated 1,068 producing wells across eastern Ohio during the fourth quarter of 2024, according to the latest data provided by ODNR. During that period, the company’s wells yielded more than 4.7 million barrels, or nearly 47% of the oil produced in Ohio during the period. For all of 2024, EAP’s wells produced 16.586 million barrels of oil, or nearly 48% of the entire state’s output last year, data show.
Much of eastern Ohio’s oil production is concentrated in Carroll and Harrison counties, ODNR records show. During the fourth quarter, wells in Carroll County – just south of Columbiana County – yielded more than 2.6 million barrels. For all of 2024, the county’s 586 wells produced 8.75 million barrels. EAP operates most of these wells – more than 500 – while energy producers INR Ohio and EOG Resources have comparatively smaller stakes in the county.
Harrison County’s results are even more impressive: the 580 horizontal wells active there pumped out more than 3 million barrels during the final three months of 2024 and 9.2 million barrels over the entire year.
EAP also holds a significant position in Harrison County, as does major oil and gas producer Ascent Resources Utica LLC. EOG Resources, Gulfport Appalachia LLC, Sound Energy Inc., and SWN Production Co. LLC also have a presence across the county, ODNR records show.
Oil production has also found its way north to regions that were once written off as major repositories of dry and liquid gas.
Columbiana County
Columbiana County – which represents the northern tier of the Utica/Point Pleasant and was until 2023 generally considered a prime target for extracting wet and dry natural gas – last year produced nearly 1.5 million barrels, a record number for this section of the play and a 54% increase from the previous year. By comparison, the wells in Columbiana County produced 970,936 barrels in 2023 and just 20,350 barrels the previous year, according to ODNR records.
During the fourth quarter of 2024, the county’s horizontal wells registered 274,299 barrels, data show. All the oil-producing wells are owned by EAP, according to records.
Indeed, EAP owns all but two of the top 10 oil producing wells in the state when output is measured by a single quarter. The largest oil well during a three-month period in 2024 was the Sproul TC well in Tuscarawas County during the second quarter. That well yielded 150,105 barrels.
“Encino has unlocked this reality, and the best part is that we’re just getting started,” Stewart says.
Natural gas continues to play a major role in the Utica/Point Pleasant, though production has leveled over the last two years. Ohio produced another 2.1 trillion cubic feet of gas in 2024, approximately flat with all of 2023 and 2022, according to ODNR.
In Columbiana County, companies such as Hilcorp Energy Co. – one of the earlier prospectors in this section of the Utica/Point Pleasant – have enjoyed strong production numbers over the past decade.
During the fourth quarter of 2024, for example, Hilcorp wells produced 16.4 billion cubic feet of natural gas in Columbiana County, ODNR data show. The county’s top producing gas well for the period was Hilcorp’s Unkefer 8H well, which yielded 797,496 million cubic feet of gas. Columbiana County’s wells, including those operated by EAP, Pin Oak Energy, and Geopetro LLC, produced 25.1 billion cubic feet of gas during the quarter, an increase of nearly 20% compared to the previous quarter.
“This is an exciting time for our state,” Stewart says. “There’s a ton of energy around and we have a premier oil and natural gas play ready to supply the moment.”
Pictured at top: Albin Dearing, president of Dearing Compressor, stands next to compressor components at its Boardman plant.