West Virginia Stays Red, But Data Center Backlash Costs GOP Seats
On Tuesday, while Democrats were flipping Congress and the Pennsylvania Senate, West Virginia did… mostly what West Virginia does. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito won a third term, both GOP congressmen won again, and Republicans kept big supermajorities in the Legislature. But dig one layer down, and there’s a warning sign for anyone who profits from Mountain State shale. Democrats more than doubled their seats in Charleston, and the issue that got them there was data centers. Specifically, House Bill 2014, the 2025 law that wiped out local control over data centers and the gas-fired “microgrids” built to power them. Here’s what happened and why it matters for WV gas. Read More “West Virginia Stays Red, But Data Center Backlash Costs GOP Seats”
If you were waiting for NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy to back up a bigger truck of cash to Virginia’s door (we were), you’ll have to keep waiting. On Tuesday, Nov. 3, the two companies filed rebuttal testimony with Virginia’s State Corporation Commission (SCC), the agency reviewing their $67 billion merger. They said “yes” to 101 of the 117 conditions that SCC staff and the Attorney General’s consumer counsel asked for, and “yes, with changes” to 13 more. But there’s no new money this time. The bill credit is the same $10 a month for four years they offered in September. What’s new is fine print: a conditional financial firewall around Dominion’s Virginia utility and two independent board members. And the companies flatly said “no” to Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s six-year rate freeze, plus a three-year freeze on rate increases pushed by the Attorney General’s consumer counsel. The pot didn’t get sweeter. It got more lawyerly. 
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. 
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. 
The word we’re seeing most this morning is “bloodbath,” and it fits. Democrats flipped both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate in yesterday’s midterm elections, only the fifth time since World War II that a party has flipped both chambers in a midterm. President Trump keeps his veto pen for two more years, so the fossil-friendly policies coming out of his agencies aren’t going anywhere soon. But the shale and LNG industries just lost a lot of friends on Capitol Hill, and maybe their best shot at federal permitting reform in a generation. Here’s what happened, why, and what it means for drillers, pipeliners, LNG exporters, and the landowners who depend on them. 
Yesterday, Ohio voters had their first big chance to vote directly on data centers, and the data centers got clobbered. There were 21 data center ballot measures in 18 Ohio towns, villages, and townships (more than half of the 41 on ballots across the country). Voters in at least 14 of those places passed bans or new restrictions, most of them by margins of roughly 3-to-1 or 4-to-1. For MDN readers, the biggest single loss came in tiny Ashville (Pickaway County, just south of Columbus). There, about 82% of voters struck down the village’s deal with EdgeConneX for two data centers and an on-site gas-fired power plant of up to 800 megawatts (MW). Below are the scorecard, the gas angle, who’s behind the bans, and what comes next. 
A new study by the Fiscal Alliance Foundation, a free-market think tank in Massachusetts, says the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) could add about $1.49 billion to New England’s wholesale electricity costs this year. Here’s the eye-opener: at today’s prices, the RGGI carbon charge adds more to the cost of making electricity at a gas-fired power plant than the natural gas does. And it’s about to get worse. Starting in 2027, the RGGI cap shrinks by 73% in six years. Pennsylvania got out just in time. 
A Lycoming County sportsmen’s club that has been around since 1936 just lost its federal tax-exempt status, and the reason is its Marcellus royalty checks. On Oct. 29, the U.S. Tax Court sided with the IRS, ruling that gas royalties made up so much of the club’s income that it no longer qualified as a tax-exempt “social club.” A lot of MDN readers run, or sit on the boards of, nonprofits that collect signing bonuses and royalty checks: churches, fire companies, land trusts, granges, hunting camps. So we read the full 20-page decision and looked into how the rules work for other types of nonprofits. Our conclusion: hunting and social clubs are most at risk, but every nonprofit with a lease should sit down with its tax attorney soon. 
A Roane County, WV, man who spent 12 years driving a truck hauling crude oil and brine has sued 15 energy companies, claiming that on-the-job exposure to benzene and “radioactive fracking brine” gave him a rare bone marrow cancer. The defendant list includes some of the biggest names in the Marcellus/Utica: Antero, EQT, Coterra, Expand Energy (formerly Chesapeake), and Shell. 
More Marcellus wells are on the way in Pine Creek country. On October 20, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued EQT ARO LLC a permit to build about 4.6 miles of 10-inch gas line through Cummings and Watson townships in western Lycoming County, starting at a well pad on a state forest tract. DEP’s notice in last Saturday’s Pennsylvania Bulletin says the line is “for the purpose of Marcellus Shale well development.” The same issue shows Pennsylvania General Energy (PGE) picking up a new earthmoving permit one township over. Pine Creek is open for business. 
Dominion Energy, Virginia’s biggest electric utility, reported third-quarter results on Friday. On the earnings call, CEO Bob Blue talked up offshore wind, solar, and batteries. He said almost nothing about natural gas. The gas news is in the fine print instead. Dominion’s new long-range plan, filed with Virginia regulators on Oct. 15, calls for nearly 9 gigawatts (GW) of new gas-fired power plants. That’s more than the company’s entire Virginia gas fleet today! Dominion is also pushing ahead with gas plants in Chesterfield County, VA, and South Carolina. Meanwhile, the planned $67 billion merger with NextEra Energy faces its make-or-break Virginia hearing, which starts Nov. 17. 
Last Wednesday, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) has proposed the first top-to-bottom rewrite of federal LNG facility safety rules in more than two decades. Most of the coverage, and most of the projected savings, centers on the giant LNG export terminals along the Gulf Coast. But the Marcellus/Utica has its own LNG industry: peak-shaving plants that keep the gas flowing on the coldest days of winter, plus small liquefaction plants fed by local shale gas. The 236-page proposal touches our corner of the LNG world in several ways, some good and one worth watching. Here’s what’s in it and what it means for the region. 
Back in January, we told you that Vistra Corp. had agreed to buy Cogentrix Energy and its 10 natural gas-fired power plants from private equity firm Quantum Capital Group for about $4 billion (see 
Welcome to a new weekly MDN feature. Every Saturday, the Pennsylvania Bulletin (the state’s official gazette) publishes page after page of permit applications and approvals from the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). Most of it covers sewage plants, quarries, and crematories. But buried in there is a steady trickle of shale-related permits: new well pad air permits, earthmoving permits for pads and pipelines, renewals, and spill cleanups. We read it so you don’t have to. Last week’s edition (Oct 31, Vol. 56, No. 44) ran 256 pages. Here’s what matters to the shale crowd. 
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