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NY’s NFG to Acquire CenterPoint’s Ohio NatGas Utility Business $2.6B
Earlier this morning, National Fuel Gas Company, a large utility company headquartered in the Buffalo, NY area with both upstream and midstream subsidiaries (Seneca Resources and NFG Midstream), announced a deal with CenterPoint Energy to acquire CenterPoint’s Ohio natural gas utility business (CNP Ohio) for $2.62 billion. The deal includes 5,900 miles of distribution and transmission pipelines and serves approximately 335,000 residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation customers that consume approximately 60 Bcf of natural gas per year. The deal significantly increases NFG’s gas utility customer base, from roughly 750,000 to well over 1 million. Read More “NY’s NFG to Acquire CenterPoint’s Ohio NatGas Utility Business $2.6B”
In April, MDN told you about a new greenfield expansion of Kinder Morgan’s Elba Express pipeline into South Carolina to serve growing demand for natural gas in the state (see 
How many articles have we written about the connection between Pennsylvania’s ill-advised quest to become a member of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and the high cost of electricity? Dozens of articles, for sure. Former PA Governor Tom Wolf attempted to force the state to join the RGGI carbon tax scheme unilaterally. Republicans in the Senate sued to block it, as the legislature is the proper branch of government with the power to tax, not the executive. Wolf’s successor, Josh Shapiro, appealed a Commonwealth Court decision in favor of the Republicans to the PA Supreme Court, where the case now sits, waiting for a decision (after the election). 
BP recently won a victory in an arbitration lawsuit against Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass (CP) LNG for not selling contracted LNG deliveries in a timely fashion (see 
The Baker Hughes U.S. national rig count has been bumpy for the past couple of months, up some weeks, down others, but mostly down overall. Last week, we resumed adding rigs, bringing the national count up by one to 548. Rigs in the Marcellus/Utica stayed the same last week at a combined 37 rigs. Pennsylvania remained unchanged at 17 active rigs. Ohio was the same at 13 rigs. And West Virginia maintained its 7 rigs, which it has operated since May 30. The Marcellus had 23 rigs and the Utica 14. 
On September 29, some 105 Democrat state legislators from 10 states across the PJM Interconnection region released a joint letter urging PJM to take immediate action to accelerate the deployment of unreliable renewable energy projects—to favor unreliable renewables over fossil fuels. The letter, organized by the partisan left-wing National Caucus of Environmental Legislators (NCEL), highlights urgent concerns about grid reliability, rising energy costs, and recent federal actions against renewable energy. A group of Pennsylvania Republican legislators responded with their own letter asking PJM to disregard the lunatic letter from NCEL. 
Two separate reports released last week from the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO), the entity in charge of the state’s electric grid, warn of coming blackouts in New York City without “several thousand megawatts of new dispatchable generation within the next ten years” added to the grid. Starting next summer, NYISO anticipates its reliability margins in NYC will be “dangerously thin,” making the grid more vulnerable to failures. This is not the first time NYISO has warned the state it’s on a razor’s edge and heading for blackouts. Yet NY’s Democrat politicians ignore the warnings and insist on pushing unreliable renewables. 
In 2022, then-Massachusetts Attorney General (now Governor) Maura Healey bragged she had “stopped two gas pipelines from coming into this state” and that she opposes new natgas infrastructure in the state. 
Nations at a meeting of the UN’s International Maritime Organization voted to delay by one year a decision on a global tax on carbon emissions from shipping. The U.S. campaigned against the measure, with President Donald Trump and other officials arguing it was an “untenable global carbon tax” that would harm the U.S. economy. The delay, a major win for Trump, was backed by 57 countries, including the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Russia, while European nations and the UK, which had supported the regulations, were on the losing side of the vote. 
Pennsylvania is aggressively positioning itself as a leader in the AI data center race with an ambitious $92 billion, state-level initiative (see 
Earlier this week, a seven-member, all-Democrat group of Pennsylvania House of Representatives members announced a six-bill legislative package aimed at regulating the “responsible development” of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers in the state. “Responsible development” is code for “no development” of new AI data centers. The proposed onerous legislation focuses on environmental and community impacts related to the centers’ water and energy use, emergency preparedness, community standards, and transparency. Don’t be fooled. This is an attempt to throttle new data centers to prevent more natural gas from being used to power them. 
Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass (CP) LNG export facility in Louisiana began operations in March 2022 (see 