M-U Spot Gas Hits 2-Year Low as Cove Point Goes Dark
Appalachian spot natural gas prices just fell off a cliff. Texas Eastern M-2 — the benchmark hub for Marcellus/Utica gas — dropped 41.5 cents to average $1.245/MMBtu for weekend and Monday deliveries, with some trades printing as low as $1.020, according to NGI (Natural Gas Intelligence). Eastern Gas North shed 44.5 cents to $1.195. Six regional hubs traded at their lowest prices since November 2024. Two things did the damage at the same time: Cove Point LNG shut down for annual maintenance Saturday, and a sharp cool-down swept the eastern U.S., taking a big bite out of air-conditioning demand. Read More “M-U Spot Gas Hits 2-Year Low as Cove Point Goes Dark”
Big Green’s second legal attack against Transco’s Southeast Supply Enhancement Project (SESE) just fired its opening shot. On September 18, Sierra Club, Appalachian Voices, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, and 7 Directions of Service filed their 142-page opening brief in the D.C. Circuit (Case No. 26-1100), arguing FERC’s approval of the pipeline was “arbitrary and capricious” because the agency allegedly ignored evidence that SESE and a second, co-located pipeline would combine to inflict “severe and potentially permanent” damage on streams across Virginia and North Carolina. Construction on SESE has continued the entire time — including through a failed bid by the same groups to freeze it back in June. 
The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) last Wednesday, Sept. 16, released its final report on the June 4, 2025, explosion and fire at Shell Polymers Monaca, the ethane cracker plant in Beaver County, PA (see 
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (via the TribLive website) ran a big Saturday feature arguing that Western Pennsylvania’s drilling rebound is being driven by the data center boom. The legwork is real — five township officials, two activist groups, a CNX executive, a Pitt professor. The framing isn’t. The story gives readers three different answers to “how many wells does Pennsylvania have,” gets the cause of last year’s drilling backward, and then, twelve hundred words in, quietly disproves its own headline. 
A small liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in Medley, Florida — just outside Miami — is now trucking rocket fuel up the peninsula to Cape Canaveral. Sawgrass LNG & Power announced last Thursday that it has begun supplying LNG to an unnamed “aerospace customer” at the Cape, with the first deliveries completed in August. We’ve written about this plant before, and the interesting question for MDN readers is the same one we asked in April 2025: are any of those molecules ours? 
NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas futures retreat on cooling weather; Utilities support proposed federal bill to reform judicial review of natural gas pipelines; INTERNATIONAL: Crude falls on Iran diplomacy hopes; Has the oil market changed forever?; Canada sees scope for France LNG partnership, minister says; Qatar says it’s ready to resume LNG operations within weeks of Hormuz reopening; Climate collapse – four billion to perish?; Europe faces ‘decades-low’ winter natural gas storage levels.