Supreme Court Weighs Boulder Climate Suit; Shale’s Future at Stake
Yesterday was the first Monday in October, which means the U.S. Supreme Court opened a new term. The very first case the justices heard may be the most important case for the oil and gas industry, including Marcellus/Utica drillers, in a generation. The case is Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County. It asks whether a city or county can haul energy companies into its own state court and make them pay for the costs of climate change. If the answer is yes, Chief Justice John Roberts predicted a copycat lawsuit from “a municipality in every single state.” That’s not a scare tactic. It’s a business plan for trial lawyers. Read More “Supreme Court Weighs Boulder Climate Suit; Shale’s Future at Stake”
Back in 2022, then-Massachusetts Attorney General (now Governor) Maura Healey hit the campaign trail and bragged, “I stopped two gas pipelines from coming into this state” (see 
New York’s so-called leaders banned natural gas hookups in new homes (see 
The Ohio River Valley Institute (ORVI), the radical anti-fossil fuel outfit that wants to shut down Appalachian shale, is at it again. Today ORVI senior researcher Sean O’Leary published an op-ed in the Ohio Capital Journal claiming that shale’s importance to Ohio’s economy is “small and shrinking.” He lists seven “facts.” We checked every one of them against the same government data he cites. Some are technically true but badly misleading. At least one is flat wrong — by a factor of a million. Here’s what the data actually says. 
A Syracuse University professor has published a paper in the Journal of the American Planning Association (JAPA) urging towns to treat AI data centers the way they treated fracking a decade ago. Syracuse’s PR department is billing it as “new research” that shows communities how to handle data centers. There’s just one problem. It isn’t really research—by the author’s own admission, no new data was collected. And several of the “facts” about fracking it leans on are flat wrong, especially about Pennsylvania. 
Anti-drilling group Protect PT has opened a new front against the biggest gas-fired AI project in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. On Aug. 25, Protect PT and two Upper Burrell residents — Allen Uhler and Guy Fuller — filed a land use appeal in Westmoreland County Court challenging the township supervisors’ approval of TECfusions’ work at the former Alcoa/Arconic research campus. Notably, the appeal doesn’t attack the gas turbines or the Marcellus wells feeding them. It attacks a piece of paper. Or rather, the absence of one. 
Eight anti-fossil fuel groups gathered on the banks of the Delaware River on September 2 to hold a press conference defending the Delaware River Basin Commission’s ban on fracking. Here’s the part that made us laugh: they already won in July. Republican leadership never even offered the amendment that would have stripped the DRBC of its power to ban drilling. So why hold a rally to defend something that isn’t under attack? Because they’re nervous — and when you read what they’re claiming, you can see why. 
A federal judge in Syracuse dropped a legal anvil on New York’s $75 billion climate shakedown yesterday, ruling that the state’s Climate Change Superfund Act is preempted by federal law and cannot be enforced. It’s a complete win for West Virginia AG J.B. McCuskey, the 21 other state AGs who joined him, and the industry groups that piled on. We’ve been following this one since Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the bill in the waning days of 2024 (see 
Five Senate Democrats have escalated their fight over Cheniere Energy’s $370 million IRS “alternative fuel” tax payout, formally asking Treasury’s internal watchdog to investigate. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), joined by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Edward Markey (D-MA), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), sent an Aug. 20 letter to Acting Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) Heather Hill. The letter asks TIGTA to determine how and why the IRS decided LNG tankers qualify as “motorboats” under the Alternative Fuel Excise Tax (AFET) credit—and, notably, whether the call was made to reward President Trump’s campaign donors. 
Pennsylvania got off easy in the 2026-27 budget. Only one data center bill made it into law, and it was a toothless one. But the Pittsburgh Business Times reports Harrisburg is loading up for another round this fall — and this time the antis have a working blueprint to copy. It’s called New York, where Gov. Kathy Hochul banned new hyperscale data centers last month, and where the anti-fracking crowd has already spent a decade proving what happens when a state tells industry to go away.