NJ Hits Vineland Data Center with $1.07M Fine Over 62 Gas Generators
New Jersey regulators have fined the company building a giant AI data center in Vineland (Cumberland County, South Jersey) $1.07 million for installing and running 62 large natural gas-fired generators without air permits. The NJ Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) calls it “by far the largest” enforcement action ever taken against a data center in the Garden State, and “possibly one of the largest such actions in the nation.” Our math: those 62 engines add up to nearly 123 megawatts (MW) of gas-fired power, running behind the meter at a site that is supposed to become a 300 MW data center serving Nebius and, through Nebius, Microsoft. The developer, DataOne, says the engines are temporary until Bloom Energy fuel cells (which also run on natural gas) take over, and it will now apply for permits. Read More “NJ Hits Vineland Data Center with $1.07M Fine Over 62 Gas Generators”
Meta’s energy chief closed 
Kimmeridge, the so-called “activist investor” that spent the past year leaning on Coterra Energy (and then Devon Energy) to dump its northeast Pennsylvania Marcellus assets, has just published a sequel to its 2024 “Shale’s Golden Years” white paper. The new paper, “Shale’s Golden Years, Part II: The Cost of Aging,” comes to a conclusion that should make Marcellus/Utica drillers (and landowners) smile: The oil side of shale is aging badly, while the natural gas side remains healthy, abundant, and capital-efficient. The rub? Kimmeridge says gas is so abundant that gas drillers need to move “downstream” to squeeze more value out of each molecule than Henry Hub will pay. 
CNX Resources has decided to walk straight into the anti-drilling movement’s favorite scare story. Two weeks ago, the Pittsburgh driller announced it will bolt continuous, real-time radiation monitoring onto its Radical Transparency program — the first-in-the-nation public-private data deal it signed with PA Gov. Josh Shapiro and the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) in November 2023. Ambient gamma radiation detectors will run around the clock at unconventional well pads and certain produced water facilities, with the raw numbers going to CNX, DEP, and the public at the same time. CNX will also start publishing the radiation surveys it already runs on every truckload of waste leaving its sites. None of this is required by law. That’s the whole point. 
How long does it take a rig hand to pull on coveralls, lace up steel-toed boots, and grab a hard hat? According to Precision Drilling’s own expert, about 2.6 to 4.1 minutes per shift. According to the workers’ lawyers, a lot longer. After 15 years, two trips to the Third Circuit and one to the U.S. Supreme Court, the two sides have split the difference, and it will cost Precision $1.9 million. On Monday (Sept. 22), both sides filed a joint brief in Williamsport federal court asking Judge Matthew Brann to approve the deal. It covers 1,006 hourly rig workers, some of whom worked Precision rigs right here in the Marcellus. The dollars are small. The legal rule the case left behind for Pennsylvania is not. 
Last month we told you DTE Energy was about to ask Michigan regulators for permission to build two new natural gas-fired power plants totaling 2,100 megawatts (MW) (see 
A federal judge in Pittsburgh has ruled that two EQT subsidiaries must face most of a lawsuit filed on behalf of four West Virginia kids who claim that emissions from EQT’s shale wells and a nearby compressor station made them sick. On Sept. 23, U.S. District Judge Robert Colville threw out just one of the five claims, a request for a medical monitoring trust fund, and he gave the kids’ lawyers 21 days to fix and refile it. The rest of the case moves forward. That includes a “strict liability” claim that EQT had argued West Virginia law flat-out does not allow against oil and gas operations. It’s a pleading-stage ruling, not a verdict. Even so, it’s a loss for EQT, and it’s one the whole industry should watch. 
Here’s a number that should make every Marcellus/Utica landowner and driller wince: $1.590. That’s what gas at the Tennessee Zone 4 Marcellus hub is fetching for October delivery, according to NGI’s Forward Look. Meanwhile, down in Florida, the very same molecule (quite possibly gas that started life in a Pennsylvania or West Virginia well) is priced at $3.960 for October. That’s a $2.37 gap, which means Florida buyers are paying 2.49 times what our local hubs get. The culprit? Not enough pipe heading south. And this week, one of the few big southbound pipes we do have, Mountaineer XPress, sprang a leak. 
Remember that July morning when 4,000 megawatts (MW) of Northern Virginia data centers yanked themselves off the PJM grid because of a routine, properly cleared fault on a single transmission line (see 
A year and a day after the Farnsworth #4 orphan well blew out and burned six people inside Ohio’s Wayne National Forest, one of the survivors went to court. Chazz Bates — a 20-year-old rig hand at the time — filed suit Aug. 21 in Washington County Common Pleas Court against his own employer, Monroe Drilling Operations LLC, and the cementing subcontractor on the job, Zanesville-based Formation Cementing Inc. The complaint, which also names 10 unidentified “John Doe” defendants, alleges the two companies skipped basic well control before pumping cement into a well nobody had pressure-tested — and that an ODNR inspector had flagged Monroe Drilling’s homemade wellhead as leaking and inadequate two months before the explosion. 
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The front-month October NYMEX natural gas futures contract settled Friday (Sept. 25) at $3.196 per MMBtu, up 28.4 cents, or 9.75%, for the week. That’s a nice week to be long gas. Most of the fireworks came on Thursday, when a leak on TC Energy’s Mountaineer XPress (MXP) pipeline in West Virginia knocked roughly 1.8 Bcf/d of Appalachian takeaway offline and sent futures up 9.06% in a single day, the biggest one-day gain since January (see 
Back in April, we told you the PA Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) had once again extended the three “temporary” air permits for Shell’s ethane cracker plant in Monaca (Beaver County) while the agency slogs through Shell’s full Title V permit application (see 
Four weeks. Same number. The Marcellus/Utica held at 33 rigs again for the week ended September 25, while the national count added four more to reach 599—a new 52-week high for the second week in a row, and one rig shy of 600. Oil rigs up. Gas rigs up. Frac spreads jumped by eight. And the big news on the price board: natural gas futures climbed back above $3, trading around $3.20 per MMBtu. Once again, everything in this report moved except the Marcellus/Utica. But the permit list delivered a plot twist we’ve been waiting for. 
Chatham County, North Carolina’s Board of Commissioners last week unanimously passed a resolution opposing Enbridge Gas North Carolina’s proposed 28-mile natural gas pipeline from Siler City to Moncure. This isn’t a garden-variety “we don’t like it” resolution. It authorizes the county to actively fight the project by challenging environmental permits, teaming up with like-minded groups, working the media, organizing residents, and coaching landowners on how to resist condemnation. In other words, a county government just signed itself up as a Big Green activist group, with taxpayers picking up the tab.