FERC Orders Regional Grids to Protect Consumers & Speed Data Centers
Last week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) launched a sweeping investigation into how power grids and utilities divide the soaring costs of supplying electricity to data centers. FERC issued six “show-cause” orders directing regional grid operators—PJM, SPP, MISO, CAISO, ISO New England, and NYISO—to prove that data center connection rates are “just and reasonable” and shield ordinary ratepayers from cost-shifting, or face federal fixes. FERC wants regional grids to speed up data center connections while protecting residential ratepayers. And they WILL do it, or else. Read More “FERC Orders Regional Grids to Protect Consumers & Speed Data Centers”
Devon Energy completed its merger with Coterra Energy just over one month ago, on May 7, paying Coterra $21.4 billion in Devon stock (see 
This is one of those “man bites dog” (or in this case, “woman” bites dog) stories. Rebecca Tepper has, for years, worked for Maura Healey—first when Healey was Attorney General of Massachusetts, and later (now) in Healey’s role as Governor of the state. Tepper is Healey’s Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs. Healey is her boss and directs the policies that Tepper executes. So it was a complete shock for us to receive an email from Tepper’s office with a letter attached (see it below) that Tepper sent to Dan Dolan, President of the New England Power Generators Association. The letter encourages (we’d call it demands) New England’s power generators to sign up to receive natural gas during Enbridge’s open season for the recently announced Project Beacon. 
Pennsylvania’s Senate Republicans are speaking truth to power, calling out PA Democrat Governor Josh Shapiro’s policies as one of the primary reasons why PA residents pay more for electricity. And Joshie doesn’t like being called out. State Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward argues the state is losing out under a roughly $325-per-megawatt-day price cap on PJM Interconnection’s capacity auctions, approved by the federal government after a lawsuit by Gov. Josh Shapiro (see 
Invenergy announced Wednesday it is surrendering offshore wind leases in New Jersey, New York, California, and Maine, pivoting instead to natural gas and geothermal projects. Under a settlement with the Justice and Interior Departments, the Chicago-based developer will receive a $765 million partial refund (money it paid the government for the leases) and will invest in gas-fired plants in Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri, as well as Western geothermal projects. Big Wind is out, natgas is in! Wow, what a change. 
Rising natural gas demand across the U.S. Northeast and adjacent southern and western regions is driving a wave of pipeline projects that will let Marcellus/Utica producers boost output into the 2030s. A fourth installment of RBN’s series about gas market dynamics in the Northeast groups the planned expansions into five buckets: Pennsylvania projects, regionwide enhancements, MVP/Transco-tied projects, expanded Ohio capacity, and more distant related efforts. Highlights include National Fuel Gas’s Pennsylvania builds, Enbridge’s TETCO “Appalachia to Market II” upgrades that add compression and looping, and the MVP Boost Project, which expands Mountain Valley Pipeline from 2 Bcf/d to 2.6 Bcf/d by mid-2028 (via additional West Virginia and Virginia compression). 
In February, MDN told you about the Kriley v. XTO Energy lawsuit (see 
In February 2024, members of the South Carolina Public Service Commission (PSC) approved a proposed project to build a 1,020-megawatt (MW) gas-fired power plant in the state’s Lowcountry, in Colleton County (see 
Owensboro (KY) Municipal Utilities (OMU) is studying a proposed 545-megawatt natural gas power plant on roughly 30 acres at the former Elmer Smith Station site along the Ohio River, where coal generation ended in 2020. The developer, Green River East GenCo, holds an option to lease and has filed a grid interconnection application. OMU hired GDS Associates for a six-month study funded by the developer. OMU General Manager Tim Lyons stressed that the early-stage project isn’t guaranteed and that OMU won’t own the roughly $1 billion plant, citing customer risk. Instead, the plant may pursue power purchase agreements ahead of joining the MISO market in 2027. The plant will employ 15–20 workers. 
Pennsylvania has become a hotspot for data center proposals, prompting community backlash, writes Penn State law professor Michael Helbing, whose hometown is Archbald, PA, a suburb of Scranton. You may recall that last week we wrote about another Scranton suburb (virtually next door to Archbald, see the map) by the name of Olyphant, and how the leaders of that borough had developed zoning regulations to protect residents yet allow data center projects to proceed (see 
Yesterday, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) announced the distribution of $243,877,400 in natural gas impact fees collected from producers for the 2025 reporting year, a whopping 48% increase over 2024. The reason for the big increase was the higher price that natural gas fetched last year and a significant uptick in the number of new wells drilled. This year’s distribution brings the cumulative total of impact fees collected and distributed since 2012 to more than $3.12 billion! 
Three months ago (March 2026), MDN reported on a northeastern Pennsylvania landowner from Luzerne County who sold his farm to an AI data center project and overnight became a multimillionaire (see 
In early May, MDN brought you details about a proposed NSCALE data center project in Mason County, WV (see 
Last week, the combined Marcellus/Utica Baker Hughes rig count remained at 36 active rigs for the fifth week in a row. The M-U’s chief competitor, the Haynesville, maintained its count of 55 active rigs, operating 19 more than the M-U. The national count lost 1 rig last week, bringing the total down to 562 rigs. Baker Hughes said the number of oil rigs rose by 2 to 433 last week, the highest total since June 2025, while gas rigs fell by 3 to 121, the lowest since October 2025.