Veolia Lands 350 MW OH Microgrid 6 Days After Paying Antero $371M
On July 30, French environmental services giant Veolia announced it had been picked by “a major project developer” to operate and maintain a 350-megawatt (MW) microgrid that will power an artificial intelligence data center campus in Ohio. The press release carried a New Albany, Ohio dateline. It’s a genuinely big deal — a behind-the-meter power plant that will supply 100% of a data center campus without leaning on the grid at all. Here’s the dots nobody else has connected. This is the same Veolia that Antero Resources and Antero Midstream spent six years suing over a botched frack wastewater plant in West Virginia. And Veolia announced this shiny new Ohio contract exactly six days after wiring Antero a check for $371 million. You can’t make this stuff up. Read More “Veolia Lands 350 MW OH Microgrid 6 Days After Paying Antero $371M”
A Harrison County landowner and longtime pro-drilling voice is now accusing EOG Resources of “theft” — and while the word grabs headlines, the underlying dispute is a lot more nuanced than one company stealing one man’s mineral rights. A recent report from Your Ohio News lays out landowner Ron Ott’s grievances against EOG, but bundles together at least four separate issues into one story. We think MDN readers deserve the untangled version. 
Two federal lawsuits landed in the same Washington, D.C. courthouse six days apart last month, and while both are nominally about pipelines in Mississippi and Alabama, Marcellus and Utica readers should pay close attention. Not because of where the pipe goes — but because of which pipelines the greens dragged into their complaints as Exhibit A. 
PJM Interconnection announced yesterday (Aug. 3) that 715 new power projects totaling more than 200 gigawatts (GW) made it into Cycle 1 of its overhauled interconnection process — the line that generators must stand in before they’re allowed to plug into the grid. The headline number is impressive. The breakdown is more impressive, at least if you own mineral rights in Greene County or run a rig in Belmont County. 
Want to know what the smartest money in the natural gas business expects to happen in the Northeast this winter? Don’t ask a politician. Look at the forward curve. As of the first of August, traders were pricing December-through-February gas at Algonquin Citygate (the Boston benchmark), Iroquois Zone 2 in New York, and three Tennessee Gas Zone 6 points in New England above $18 per MMBtu. At the other 77 pricing hubs Natural Gas Intelligence tracks across the U.S. and Canada, that same three-month strip averages under $5. Read that again. Same country. Same historically abundant supply. Roughly four times the price. 
The Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) — the outfit that owns the New York Stock Exchange and runs the world’s largest energy derivatives markets — put out a press release in mid-July containing a number that ought to catch the eye of every Marcellus/Utica producer and royalty owner. On July 1, open interest in ICE’s North American financial natural gas futures and options markets hit an all-time record of 13.4 million contracts, up 9% from a year ago. “Open interest” is just a fancy way of counting the bets still sitting on the table — contracts that have been opened and not yet closed out or settled. A record means more people than ever are using these markets to lock in a price ahead of time. Which raises the obvious question: lock in a price against what? 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Morrisey touts 50 by 50 plan in addressing oil and gas association; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: EnCap Flatrock announces sale of M6 Midstream to Williams for $5.5B; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas futures post small gains; Amogy and 2G Energy successfully demonstrate integrated ammonia-to-power generation; The climate Faucis are coming, the climate Faucis are coming!; INTERNATIONAL: Crude sinks as tensions ease; Q3 is set for extreme volatility, oil analysts warn; We’ve lost the war against climate change – time to scrap net zero; India to climate cartel – count us out; Strait of Hormuz crisis shifts LNG’s biggest risk from supply to demand.