Big Green Takes Midterm Victory Lap, Sets Sights on Data Centers
The votes from Tuesday’s midterm election are barely counted, and Big Green is already spiking the football. Democrats won control of both the U.S. House and Senate, plus a pile of governorships and state legislatures, including a full trifecta in Pennsylvania. Now the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), Climate Power, EDF Action and a long list of smaller groups are lining up to take credit and to tell the winners what they expect in return. MDN went looking for what they’ve said publicly. The common thread? Hardly a peep about “climate change.” It’s all electricity bills, Big Oil, and, here’s the part that should worry our readers, data centers. Read More “Big Green Takes Midterm Victory Lap, Sets Sights on Data Centers”
It happened, or very nearly so. For the first time in more than three decades, Democrats have claimed control of the Pennsylvania state Senate, with one race left for the Associated Press to make it official. Add a bigger Democratic majority in the state House, and Gov. Josh Shapiro’s landslide reelection, and Democrats now hold a “trifecta” in Harrisburg: all three levers of state government. Since Democrats took the House in 2022, the GOP-controlled Senate has been the Marcellus industry’s firewall against bad energy policy. On Jan. 5, 2027, that firewall goes away. Here’s what we know so far, and what we think it means for drillers, landowners, pipeliners, and everyone else who profits from PA shale. 
Last week we told you that West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey had served subpoenas on at least six environmental groups. He wanted nearly 10 years of their records, and his legal hook was the state’s consumer protection law (see 
Four days before Ohioans pick their next governor, Rolling Stone and the climate activist website DeSmog published a story by anti-fossil writer Justin Nobel under the headline “Ohio Denies Evidence of Fracking Waste in Drinking Water. Its Own Records Show Otherwise.” We read every word. The state’s records show no such thing. What they show is one salty water well in Coshocton County that the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) investigated in 2021 and traced to a naturally salty layer of rock. Much of the rest is opinion from activists and a water well driller, plus a candidate’s campaign promise. Here’s what the story gets wrong, and what it leaves out. 
Big Green group FracTracker Alliance, with partner Buckeye Environmental Network (BEN), has released a new report claiming Ohio logged 2,529 oil and gas “incidents” from 2015 through 2025, and that incidents are “rising” while oversight is “lax.” The Ohio Capital Journal ran with the big number without checking it. But here’s the thing: if you actually read FracTracker’s own charts (we did, all 31 pages), they tell a very different story. Shale wells account for less than 8% of the incidents. Serious incidents fell more than 80%. And the “rise” is almost entirely in records that state regulators didn’t even rate as “minor.” Let’s set the record straight…
Back in April, MDN told you about Enbridge’s ~$300 million job to move the natural gas lines that hang off the Bourne and Sagamore bridges and run them under the Cape Cod Canal instead (see 
North Carolina’s Oil and Gas Commission is doing something it is required to do once every 10 years: review its entire rulebook for oil and gas drilling, including fracking. The Commission’s verdict so far is that every last rule is “necessary.” Case closed, right? Not if you’re an anti. Clean Water for North Carolina (CWFNC) is in full alarm mode, urging supporters to flood the Commission with “not one step back” comments before the November 9 deadline. Why the panic over rules that have never been used (not once) in 11 years? Follow the gas. A company wants to reopen an old vertical well in Lee County to power an AI data center. It would be the first commercial gas well in the state’s history. 
The Delaware Riverkeeper Network and PennFuture fought for years for the right to challenge Transco’s Regional Energy Access (REA) pipeline permits before Pennsylvania’s Environmental Hearing Board (EHB). They got their wish. Then they lost at the EHB. And yesterday, they lost again in federal court. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit unanimously upheld the state Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) water permits for the Williams-owned pipeline expansion. The court said the groups never showed that the extra water testing they demanded would have changed a thing. Even better, the court handed down a ruling on Pennsylvania’s Environmental Rights Amendment that could make life a lot harder for anti-drillers going forward. 
Remember Bucks County, PA’s “sneaky” lawsuit against Big Oil? The one a county judge tossed in May 2025 “with prejudice,” meaning don’t come back? Well, it’s back. Today (Oct. 14), Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court will hear Bucks County’s appeal, which asks the court to bring the dead case back to life. Lined up against the county is an impressive list of “friends of the court,” including Pennsylvania’s own Attorney General Dave Sunday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association, the Pennsylvania Chamber, and our friends at both PIOGA and the Marcellus Shale Coalition. All of them are telling the appeals court the same thing: leave it dead. 
Last Wednesday, MDN told you about the Allegheny County Board of Health’s latest move against shale drilling (see 
The radical green groups trying to ban new Marcellus/Utica drilling in Pennsylvania through the back door haven’t gone away. They push shale well “setbacks” out to as much as a mile. Yesterday (Oct. 7), a coalition led by the Clean Air Council and Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) marked the two-year anniversary of its rulemaking petition and pushed in Harrisburg, calling on the Shapiro administration to act. The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) still plans to deliver its recommendation to the Environmental Quality Board (EQB) by the end of this year. The antis are making noise. We need to make more. 
On Tuesday, a crowd of protesters packed the Pennsylvania Capitol Rotunda in Harrisburg to demand a statewide moratorium (a ban, really) on new data centers. Most of the coverage framed it as an outpouring of everyday Pennsylvanians fed up with Big Tech. MDN took a closer look at who organized the rally, who arranged the buses, and who stood at the microphone. What we found: the same groups and many of the same faces that have fought shale drilling, pipelines, and gas-fired power plants in this state for the past 15 years. New signs. Same agenda. 
The 108-mile “Women’s Water Walk” along the route of the proposed Constitution Pipeline wrapped up last Sunday in Schoharie. On Tuesday, the walkers carried jars of creek water to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office in Albany. The walk is over, but it didn’t end quietly. It gave birth to a new, permanent anti-pipeline coalition run by Frack Action. The Governor’s office answered with a carefully worded statement that isn’t quite the “stand strong” pledge the walkers came for. And the walk’s fundraising came up about 80% short of its goal. 
The Allegheny County Board of Health has fired the first shot in what looks like a slow-motion campaign to squeeze shale drilling out of the county. At its September meeting, the board voted unanimously to have the county health department look into whether Article 21, the county’s air pollution rulebook, should be rewritten to remove permitting exemptions that oil and gas operations now enjoy. Nothing changes yet. But the idea came straight out of the board’s own “Fracking Committee,” chaired by a writer for an anti-fracking group, and the folks at Food & Water Watch are already celebrating. Here’s what happened, what it could mean for drillers and landowners in Allegheny County, and why MDN isn’t buying the “it’s just a review” line.