Gas Is Back on Long Island: National Grid Files for 3 New Units
The state that banned fracking, blocks pipelines, and has a law on the books requiring a zero-emissions grid by 2040 may soon get new gas-fired power plants. National Grid Ventures, the unregulated arm of utility National Grid, has filed requests with New York’s grid operator (NYISO) to build three new natural gas units at two of its old Long Island power plants: the E.F. Barrett station in Island Park (Nassau County) and the Northport Power Station (Suffolk County). Taken together, the three units add up to about 1,481 megawatts (MW) of new gas-fired generation in summer, and 1,584 MW in winter. New York Focus calls it the clearest sign yet of a “gas renaissance” in the Empire State. We call it reality knocking on Albany’s door. Read More “Gas Is Back on Long Island: National Grid Files for 3 New Units”
Cheniere Energy, the country’s largest LNG exporter and a big customer for gas from right here in the Marcellus/Utica, just put up another blockbuster quarter. Cheniere shipped a record 188 cargoes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from its two Gulf Coast plants in 3Q26, raised its full-year profit forecast for the third time this year, and bumped its dividend by more than 12%. More important for our neck of the woods: Cheniere is getting close to a final investment decision (FID) on a big expansion at Sabine Pass, Louisiana — the plant where our molecules end up. And in a twist nobody saw coming a few years ago, QatarEnergy is now a Cheniere customer. 
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. 
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) says it plans to approve the air permit for Aligned Data Centers’ giant “Project Phoenix” campus at the former Bruce Mansfield coal plant site in Shippingport (Beaver County, PA). The campus will run on Marcellus/Utica natural gas, but it won’t burn the gas. Aligned plans to make its own electricity with solid oxide fuel cells, which turn gas into power through a chemical reaction instead of combustion. DEP published its notice in Saturday’s Pennsylvania Bulletin and scheduled a public hearing for Thursday, December 3, in Shippingport. Get the popcorn ready. 
Enterprise Products Partners (EPD), the Houston midstream giant that owns ATEX, the 1,230-mile pipeline carrying Marcellus/Utica ethane to Mont Belvieu, TX, reported a blowout third quarter on Thursday. But the part of the earnings call that matters most to M-U drillers and landowners came during Q&A. An analyst asked whether the pending EQT-Range combination changes the math on ATEX recontracting. Enterprise’s answer: not really, but the next round of contracts will be priced for “today’s market.” Translation: the rate reset we told you about in August is still coming. 
DT Midstream (DTM), the Detroit-based midstream company that gathers Marcellus/Utica gas in northeastern and southwestern Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio, released its third-quarter 2026 update on Thursday. The headline for our neck of the woods: Northeast gathering volumes slipped about 9% from the second quarter, to 1.25 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day), and DTM says they’ll drop again in the fourth quarter because drillers are curtailing (holding back) production while prices are weak. The longer-term picture is much brighter. DTM is taking bids on another expansion of Millennium Pipeline into the New York market, signing 20-year deals to move Appalachian gas to Indiana power plants, and talking about a bigger NEXUS Pipeline down the road. 
Millennium Pipeline, the pipe that carries northeast Marcellus gas across New York’s Southern Tier, is taking bids on a new expansion called the Ramapo Enhancement Project (REP). The binding open season runs through Nov. 13. Millennium is offering up to 60,000 dekatherms per day (Dth/d) of new firm capacity, roughly 58 MMcf/d (million cubic feet per day). The gas would move from the Stagecoach storage hub on the PA-NY border to the Algonquin pipeline at Ramapo, NY, which serves the New York City area and New England. Service would start Nov. 1, 2028. It’s a modest project, but it’s a new pipeline expansion into New York. Pinch us. 
Antero Midstream (AM) has a new pipeline on the drawing board. During Thursday’s 3Q26 earnings call, CEO Michael Kennedy said AM wants to build a North-South pipeline from Antero Resources’ West Virginia field north to the Clarington, Ohio, market. Kennedy said AM is “scoping it right now” and spending “a little initial capital” to assess it, and that “you’ll probably see us FID that in 2027.” (FID means final investment decision, the point where a company commits to build.) There was no press release. The news came out in answer to a question from a Goldman Sachs analyst. 
Shell CEO Wael Sawan had warm words yesterday for the company’s Beaver County ethane cracker plant, calling it “the 800-pound asset” in Shell’s chemicals business and saying it has been performing very, very well. Then, in the same breath, he repeated what he’s been saying for more than a year: Shell is not the “natural owner” of chemical assets, and it is in “deep discussions” to sell or partner them, with news expected in the coming months. Sawan’s comments came during Shell’s third-quarter 2026 earnings call. There’s one new wrinkle. If Shell can’t get the price it wants, the more likely outcome may be folding its chemicals business into someone else’s and keeping a minority stake, rather than selling outright. We read through the call transcript and Shell’s 3Q documents to see what they tell us about Monaca and the chemicals division. 
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…
Round two. A month after FERC accepted PJM Interconnection’s one-time “emergency” power auction for data centers and then froze it for five months (see 
In June, we told you that 194 landowners in Salem Township (Luzerne County, near Berwick) were lining up to become AI millionaires by selling their land for a giant new data center project (see 
Wall Street’s hedge funds have placed their biggest bet against natural gas prices in more than six years. They’re wagering that a “Super El Niño” will give the U.S. a warm, wimpy winter and leave way too much gas sitting in storage. They may be right. But the last time hedge funds loaded up on the short side of gas heading into winter (this past January!), Mother Nature handed them their heads. 
The Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) is leading a three-state push by Appalachian drillers to get the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA, S. 5653) over the finish line. The timing is no accident. When the U.S. Senate returns from its campaign break on Monday, November 9, the first thing it will do is take a make-or-break procedural vote on this permitting reform bill. Here’s where things stand: who’s lined up for it, who’s lined up against it, and why a bill about paperwork matters to every landowner and driller in the Marcellus/Utica.