$900M Utica Gas-Fired Electric Plant Coming to Harrison County, OH
Several news sources are reporting that EmberClear has committed to fund and build a new $900 million, 1,000-megawatt electric generating plant in Harrison County, OH. The new plant will be fed by Utica Shale gas. Officials in the county have been working on a deal to lure the plant to the county since December of last year and stress it is a “long-term project” and “not a slam-dunk” because of extensive regulatory hurdles. If the project happens, it will generate 500 temporary construction jobs and 30 permanent jobs and use a huge amount of natural gas to power it (good for drillers!). MDN did some checking and found one potential cloud over the deal. EmberClear was, until July, a Canadian-based company. But it went bankrupt and after emerging from bankruptcy it changed its name to Ember Partners, now based in Houston, TX. Apparently the bankruptcy hasn’t slowed them down–but it does raise a question about the financial stability of the company and its ability to fund a big-money project like the Harrison Power Project. However, these projects are typically funded by one or several investors and not by the company that builds and operates the facility…
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We’ve written plenty about President Obama’s so-called Clean Power Plan (CPP), introduced last summer, a plan to force electric generators to convert to using more “renewable” sources of energy–and less fossil fuels (see 
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara is about to claim another high-level scalp in corruption that seems to pervade New York State. Bharara has already brought cases that convicted both the Speaker of the Assembly Sheldon Silver (a Democrat) and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (a Republican) for corruption and bribes. With each case Bharara gets closer to Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Last week he got REALLY close. A former close Cuomo aide was indicted on bribery charges. The unfortunate aspect of this story is that he was bribed in connection with a project MDN has lent moral support to–a $900 million natural gas-fired electric generating plant in Orange County, NY (see 
Natural gas-fired electric plants are a really big deal throughout the Marcellus/Utica region. Each time one of these plants gets built, it injects upward of $1 billion (or more) into the local and regional economy, creates 500 or more temporary jobs and 25-30 permanent jobs. And the gas it uses…oy vey! They are an important new customer for the abundant supplies of natural gas we have. So it’s a big deal when a new plant gets announced, and then, when that plant gets officially approved. Last October (nearly a year ago now) Advanced Power Services announced they want to build a second mega-electric generating plant that taps into and uses Ohio’s Utica Shale. The new plant will generate a whopping 1,100 megawatts of electricity and be located in Columbiana County, OH (see 
The Ohio Business Roundtable (BRT) is a partnership of the CEOs of leading Ohio companies that collectively account for more than $1 trillion in annual revenues, $1 trillion in market value and $2.6 trillion in assets. BRT’s members employ 2.6 million men and women, invest hundreds of millions of dollars annually in combined charitable contributions and research and development, and generate billions of dollars in sales for small and medium-sized businesses that are part of the supply chain. When the BRT in Ohio talks, people had better listen. Here’s the latest in what the BRT has to say: The state (i.e. Gov. Kasich) needs “a comprehensive reworking of the state’s energy policies in order to accelerate shale gas development.” No more tiptoeing around. Build those pipelines and build them NOW. That’s the upshot of a new report from the BRT titled, “Improving Ohio Energy Competitiveness” (full copy below). The report is backed up by detailed research from powerhouse consulting company McKinsey and Co. (their research is also embedded below). The BRT’s report points out the importance of the state’s natural gas-fired electric generating plants and says without more pipelines, new power plants won’t get built. The two issues are joined at the hip–vitally important for Ohio’s shale drillers, midstream companies, electric generators and yes Ohio’s electric ratepayers as well. LISTEN UP: Here’s what the BRT had to say…
American Electric Power is selling four electric generating plants to a newly formed joint venture of Blackstone and ArcLight Capital Partners. Three of the plants are natural gas-fired–two of them in Ohio and one in Indiana. One of the plants is coal-fired, located in Ohio. Total sale price for all four: $2.17 billion. While the announcement doesn’t say, we expect at least the gas-fired plants in Ohio, and perhaps the one in Indiana, are fed in part by Utica/Marcellus natural gas. Which is why the story caught our eye. The plants are already up and running–this is simply a transfer of ownership and (we presume) management of the plants. The larger story is just how important these types of plants are in the Marcellus/Utica ecosystem–because they use a huge amount of gas. Here’s the details of the deal…
Macquarie Infrastructure has filed an application to build a new natural gas-fired electric generating plant in Chesapeake, Virginia, the state’s third most populous city, located near Norfolk. The facility, called Matex Virginia Power, would produce 1,400 megawatts of electricity by using three gas combustion turbines and one steam turbine. It’s not (yet) known how the new plant will get its gas, although Dominion’s planned $5 billion, 550-mile long Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project is scheduled to have a branch going to Chesapeake. It’s not much of a stretch to think that ACP will feed this new plant, bringing Marcellus/Utica gas from the north to the plant. Here’s the good news, followed by reaction from environmental Nazis that oppose it…
In June 2014 MDN broke the news that Moxie Energy was in the hunt to begin a third new Marcellus gas-powered electric plant project in Pennsylvania, near Wilkes-Barre (see 
There is precisely one main reason why the United States produces 40% less carbon dioxide now than it did five years ago. Must be the onslaught of solar, right? Nope. How about wind. Yeah, wind power is coming on strong–I see those ugly windmills all over the place now. Must be wind power, right? Nope. Hydro? Nope. Biomass? Nope. There is only one main reason why we pump less CO2 into the atmosphere (if you care about that sort of thing), and it’s this: because fracked shale gas has replaced coal in electric generating plants. You would think environmentalists would celebrate. They don’t and they won’t, pointing out their uber-hypocrisy…
A quick tutorial on the U.S. electric grid system. At a very basic level, the electric grid in our country is made up of RTOs (regional transmission organizations) and ISOs (independent system operators). Each RTO or ISO covers a single state (ISO) or multiple states (RTO). Electric generation is shifted around to meet demands in each region, overseen by whichever regional authority is in charge. For much of the Marcellus/Utica region, the electric organization in charge is the RTO called PJM (lots of acronyms!) PJM Interconnection covers all or parts of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia. There has been a flurry of new natgas-fired electric plants announced over the past six months or so. The question being asked by industry analysts and bankers (who back such projects) is this: Are we building too many new electric plants, particularly in the Marcellus/Utica?…