If 120K acres is accurate, leases in Potter County, PA where they are operating have gone for between $300 an acre and $2000 an acre since they started there. That's 36 million to 240 million just to sign the leases. They have 116 permit filings with the PA DEP - public information searchable on the interwebs. It takes another 10 million plus to build the infrastructure, contract the rigs, the fracking crews, pipeline crews to connect to main pipelines, etc, for every well (I am generalizing that number). It's certainly approaching or exceeding a half-billion dollar investment, which one doesn't simply walk away from, even if you have stupid amounts of money. You either market it for sale as he did with the Shell and AE deals or you wait it out and hopefully you have Lessee's option to extend in the language of all of your core leases. I don't think you can say that they aren't in the oil and gas business in any meaningful way, and even if they do sell the JKLM assets, it seems like O&G is probably his first love in business and I wouldn't be surprised to hear he gets in somewhere else...
Shell has publicly given up, announcing a sale in the coming months to Seneca Resources, of their remaining Appalachia assets (an arm of National Fuel). They have been making a minor divestment here of there for the last couple of years.