Data Centers are “The Next Big Thing” for M-U Natural Gas
Data centers, which are buildings full of computers crunching search queries and other requests, along with artificial intelligence (AI), which uses data centers, are closely tied to the natural gas industry. Data centers require enormous amounts of electricity, and the fastest and most scalable solution to provide that electricity is to construct gas-fired power plants. You see the connection between data centers and Marcellus/Utica natural gas. According to MDN friend Mark Caskey, founder and CEO of Steel Nation, supplying electricity for data centers is natural gas’s next big role. He should know. Read More “Data Centers are “The Next Big Thing” for M-U Natural Gas”
You gotta hand it to Pennsylvania Democrats. They LOVE LOVE LOVE to tax other people’s money—especially companies and industries that they hate, like the state’s oil and gas industry. On July 8, PA State Senator Art Haywood (Democrat from Philadelphia) introduced PA Senate Bill (SB) 910, which slaps a 6.5% severance tax on the gross production of all oil and natural gas produced in the state. However, the bill goes further by repealing the provision in the 2012 Act 13 law that states that if a severance tax is ever implemented, the existing impact fee would be eliminated. In other words, Haywood’s bill eliminates the provision to end the impact fee, meaning the impact fee would remain in place. So, drillers would be taxed twice for the same thing. Fortunately, the bill is DOA in the Senate. 
Verne, Inc., a California-based energy company, announced last week that it will open its first manufacturing plant in the Marcellus Energy Park near Muncy, Lycoming County, PA. Verne developed a process to increase the density of hydrogen by storing the gas in a cold and compressed state, making it more efficient to transport in larger volumes. The new PA facility (which should be up and running in nine months) will build the storage tanks for this cold hydrogen. The hydrogen will be transported via truck to power data centers, drilling sites, construction sites, and more. 
The media fuss is hard to miss about today’s Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit being held at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. PA Senator Dave McCormick organized the event. Among the attendees will be President Trump, several cabinet secretaries, and other White House officials. Much of the buzz is around $90 billion in AI and energy investments expected to be announced. In preparation for the big event, a roundtable was held yesterday at CNX headquarters in Washington County, PA, to discuss clearing away permitting obstacles and red tape to help PA realize some (if not most) of that $90 billion in investments. 
The more the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) beats the drum to say it has solved the slooooooow permitting process in the state, the more hollow it rings. It seems like every other week, the DEP issues a press release to announce it has almost cleared all of the agency’s backlog of permits. Another such pronouncement was issued yesterday. The DEP claims its permit backlog has been reduced by 98% since November 2023, decreasing the backlog from over 2,400 permit applications to fewer than 50. Good for them. 
Kentucky has experienced unprecedented economic growth in recent years, similar to other southern states. Data centers are looking to Kentucky for future expansion. Last fall, Louisville Gas and Electric Company (LG&E) and Kentucky Utilities Company (KU), both part of PPL Corporation, forecasted in their Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) the need for additional power generation due to the expected influx of data centers and economic development across their service territories (see 
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