TC Energy: Two More Columbia Expansions + Bigger Bet on M-U Supply
TC Energy issued its second quarter 2026 update on July 30, and the headline numbers were strong: comparable EBITDA of C$2.9 billion, up 12% over 2Q25, and full-year guidance now tracking the upper end of the C$11.6–$11.8 billion range. Nice, but that’s investor stuff. The news that matters for Marcellus/Utica landowners, drillers, and midstreamers is sitting in the project tables — and in a demand forecast TC has now raised two years running. Read More “TC Energy: Two More Columbia Expansions + Bigger Bet on M-U Supply”
Dominion Energy reported second-quarter 2026 results on July 31, and while Wall Street focused on the penny-counting, there were three items in the release and on the analyst call that matter to Marcellus/Utica producers, midstreamers, and landowners: two new gas-fired power plants moving into permitting, a merger timeline that’s now locked in at the state level, and a nine-figure write-off on renewable assets that tells you which way the wind is actually blowing. 
Every so often the antis tell you exactly what they’re up to, and you just have to sit back and enjoy it. On Saturday, Inside Climate News ran a story on the ongoing campaign by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP), Clean Air Council, and their friends to jack up setbacks — the required distance between a well pad and the nearest building — from the current 500 feet to distances that would end new shale drilling in Pennsylvania. The new twist? They’ve hitched the campaign to the data center boom. More data centers means more gas, and more gas means (in their telling) more danger, so hurry up and pass the rules. It’s the same petition MDN has been tracking since 2024, dressed in a 2026 outfit. 
Let’s be honest — corporate “sustainability reports” are usually 100+ pages of stock photography, buzzwords, and pie charts about employee engagement. We normally give them a wide berth. But Williams released its 2025 Sustainability Report on July 29, and this one is different. Underneath the ESG wrapping paper is a straight-up growth story, and a surprising amount of it runs directly through the Marcellus and Utica. If you’re a landowner in Licking County, a driller in the Utica dry gas window, or anyone who owns WMB shares, there’s real news here. 
Antero Midstream Corporation (AM) posted second quarter 2026 results on Tuesday and held its analyst call yesterday morning. A quick word on the corporate plumbing for newer readers: Antero Midstream and Antero Resources (AR) are two separate publicly traded companies that share a management team. AR drills the wells; AM gathers, compresses and moves the gas and handles the water. Different shareholders, same brain trust. The headline number is a good one. AM gathered 4.1 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day) during the quarter, a 19% jump year over year and a company record. Compression volumes rose 17%. Most of that growth came from the HG Midstream assets AM bought earlier this year and has now fully digested. Processing and fractionation capacity at AM’s joint venture ran at 100% utilization — you can’t do better than full. 
National Fuel Gas Company (NFG) — the Williamsville, NY company that drills (Seneca Resources), pipes (NFG Supply Corporation, Empire), and sells gas at the meter (NFG Distribution Corp) — issued its fiscal third quarter update Wednesday evening and talked it over with analysts Thursday morning. NFG’s fiscal year ends September 30, so their “third quarter” is everyone else’s second quarter (April–June). There’s a lot in here for Marcellus/Utica watchers, but two items stand out: Supply Corporation more than tripled the size of its Line N System Upgrade Project, and Seneca is about to start writing big checks to landowners in Tioga County. 
Detroit-based DT Midstream (DTM) reported second quarter 2026 results this week, and while the headline numbers were fine but unremarkable, the Appalachian news buried in the deck is worth your attention. DTM booked net income of $112 million ($1.09 per diluted share) and adjusted EBITDA of $305 million, declared a $0.88 per share dividend, and reaffirmed full-year 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance of $1.155–$1.225 billion. Fine. Now here’s the part that matters if you own minerals in Belmont County or run a rig crew in Susquehanna County: DTM just signed up a new 380 MMcf/d interconnect on the NEXUS Gas Transmission pipeline that will feed a gas-fired power plant serving a new data center in Ohio — and it’s expanding its Appalachia Gathering System by 100 MMcf/d to shove more supply into NEXUS and Texas Eastern. 
I&S Inc. of New York, an Allegany-based well servicing company owned by Dan Sessler, is planning a $9 million expansion that will create at least 80 new jobs. The company, which has serviced oil, gas, and solution mining wells since 1988, is purchasing the old Allegany Drive-In property along Route 417 — just up the road from its current headquarters. Plans call for a new 5,000-square-foot office, a 14,400-square-foot commercial shop, and a 9,600-square-foot cold storage warehouse to store pipe for its oil, gas, and solution mining operations. The company secured a 10-year PILOT agreement from the Cattaraugus County IDA. Construction costs are estimated at $7.3 million. 
For the past two years we’ve heard the same complaint on repeat: those greedy data centers are jacking up your electric bill. State legislators have introduced data center construction bans. Towns have passed moratoriums. A Gallup poll found roughly 70% of Americans don’t want a data center anywhere near them. The White House even got seven big tech companies to sign a “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” this past March. Turns out the whole premise may be backward. A new working paper from researchers at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) — Asa Watten, John Bistline, and Geoffrey Blanford — looked at the actual data from 2015 through 2024 and found data centers caused average residential electricity rates to fall. Not rise. Fall. 
Yesterday we told you about Project Oak Leaf, Eastern Gas Transmission and Storage’s (EGTS) 52.5-mile expansion that will carry Leidy gas down to Maryland and Virginia (see 
We periodically go pipeline-notice hunting to see what’s throttling Marcellus/Utica molecules on any given day (see 
Back in May, we told you about a new 28-mile intrastate natural gas pipeline Enbridge Gas North Carolina (EGNC) wants to build in Chatham and Lee counties, running from Siler City southeast to Moncure (see 
Two days ago, we brought you word of a big new gas-fired power plant headed for Dominion Energy’s Mt. Storm complex in Grant County, WV (see 
There’s a brand-new pipeline project on the board for our region, and it’s a good one. Eastern Gas Transmission and Storage (EGTS) — a BHE GT&S company, which means it ultimately belongs to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy — is proposing Project Oak Leaf, a 52.5-mile expansion of its PL-1 system that will move an extra 250,000 dekatherms per day (Dth/d) of natural gas from Clinton County, Pennsylvania down to customers in Maryland and Virginia. (A dekatherm is a heat measurement roughly equal to one thousand cubic feet of gas, so call it about 250 MMcf/d — 250 million cubic feet per day.) EGTS plans to file its application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in the fourth quarter of this year, with construction starting in early 2028 and gas flowing by the end of 2029. The Frederick (MD) News-Post picked up the story yesterday. Four public open houses are already on the calendar, the first one next week. 