19 New Shale Well Permits Reported for PA-OH-WV Aug 17 – 23
The Marcellus/Utica region received 19 new drilling permits last week, August 17 – 23, down from the 27 permits issued two weeks ago. For the second week in a row, Pennsylvania issued the fewest new permits, with 2 (after issuing just 4 two weeks ago). What’s up with PA? Ohio issued 4 permits. And West Virginia took the prize last week, issuing 13 new permits. The drillers who received new permits were: Expand Energy (6), Infinity Natural Resources (1), Northeast Natural Energy (1), Pennsylvania General Energy (2), Tiburon Oil & Gas (3), and Vickery Energy (6). Read More “19 New Shale Well Permits Reported for PA-OH-WV Aug 17 – 23”


Nineteen months after TECfusions bought the old Alcoa research campus in Upper Burrell (Westmoreland County), PA, and promised to build 3 gigawatts of gas-fired AI computing capacity, the company announced yesterday that the site is live and delivering GPU capacity to a paying customer. It’s a small first bite of a very large apple—but it’s real, it’s running on gas turbines today, and it sits on top of Marcellus wells the company already owns.
When we covered DTE Energy’s second quarter results in July, we grumbled that the company was throwing $10 billion at unreliable renewables and only $2.5 billion at a single new gas plant to replace a retiring coal fleet (see
Back in June, we praised South Strabane Township in Washington County, PA, for doing the hard, unglamorous work of writing data center rules instead of slamming the door shut (see
South Carolina’s utility regulators voted unanimously yesterday to let a $2.8 billion artificial intelligence data center in Spartanburg County build and run its own 457-megawatt natural gas power plant without asking the state’s permission first. The decision is a big win for the “behind-the-meter” model — where a data center brings its own generation instead of leaning on the grid — and it’s a model that is going to burn a lot of molecules. Possibly some of ours.
A press release crossed the wire yesterday announcing that Edge LNG — the little company that showed the Marcellus how to truck its stranded gas to market — has been sold. Sapphire Gas Solutions of Conroe, Texas, is the buyer. Blue Water Energy, the private equity firm that backed Edge from the beginning, is the seller. And here’s the part that caught our eye: the announcement calls Edge “a Texas-based LNG company” serving customers in the Southern U.S. The Marcellus, where Edge made its name, doesn’t get a single mention.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Gas turbine, copper supply seen as near-term data center constraints in PJM; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Sempra begins permitting process for major LNG expansion in Texas; Southwest natural gas cash tops $8 as Southern California supply runs short; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas gains as September contract expires; Trump signs order banning some foreign equipment from US energy grid; What the US Open can teach us about the value of natural gas; MIT uses AI to challenge a century-old process for mass ammonia production; US LNG feedgas demand hits highest level since April as plants return from maintenance; DOE begins tests for fracked geothermal; Trump’s head of offshore leasing leaving for oilfield services firm Halliburton; INTERNATIONAL: Oil rises as Iran deal hopes fade; U.S. outpaces China in nat gas capacity for AI data centers; Iraq to deliver oil beyond Hormuz; Are we misreading the oil demand shock from Hormuz?; Why Fort McKay First Nation is a profound example; GALACTIC: Titan is bigger than Mercury, runs on methane and ethane.