During 1957 the Pennsylvania Department of Forests and Waters, which has jurisdiction over oil and gas leasing off-shore in Pennsylvania's part of Lake Erie, leased two blocks, totaling 35,710 acres, to the New York State Natural Gas Corporation. This made Pennsylvania the first border State of the Great Lakes to open the way for off-shore exploration. Major deep (Middle Devonian or deeper) drilling activity continued in 1957 in Clearfield, eastern Jefferson, Indiana, and Westmoreland counties as operators in these areas continued their development program. The development of the Rockton, Reed-Deemer, and Jacksonville fields continued with 65, 9, and 20 gas producers, respectively, completed in each field in fracture-type reservoirs. The developed area of the Rockton fiel was 6,700 acres, and the Reed-Deemer field 4,000 acres at the end of the year. Three successful new-field wildcats drilled during 1957 had no confirmation wells by the end of the year. A wildcat well on the Laurel Hill anticline in Westmoreland County had an open-flow capacity of 6,700 MCF of gas per day from the Onondaga chert (Middle Devonian). Another wildcat in Spring Township, Crawford County, produced 916 MCF on open-flow from the Red Medina sandstone (Silurian). A third wildcat was drilled in Bedford County on one of several anticlines in the Broad Top synclinorium, producing 1,427 MCF from the Oriskany sandstone (Lower Devonian). One hundred seventy-three deep wells were completed in Pennsylvania in 1956. One hundred twenty-one of these were gas wells, 49 were dry holes, and thr e were drilled for gas storage.

The shallow-sand territory of western Pennsylvania (Upper Devonian or higher) had one new-field discovery in Elk County and a new-pool discovery in Westmoreland County. The Harvey Lake gas field in Lackawanna County had 10 development wells completed during the year, 5 of which produced gas. Shallow-sand drilling activity increased in 1957 over that of 1956. In all, 955 shallow-sand wells were completed. Of these, 210 were gas wells, 48 were oil wells, 61 were dry holes, and 9 were drilled for gas storage. Six hundred twenty-seven were drilled in connection with secondary-recovery oil operations. Oil production decreased from 8,231,000 bbls. in 1956 to 8,210,000 bbls. in 1957 and gas production from 118,416,000 MCF to 107,004,000 MCF.