EPA is “Clearing the Regulatory Path” for U.S. to Dominate AI
After returning from the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation summit held on Tuesday of this week in Pittsburgh, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin published an op-ed highlighting steps his agency is taking to reduce burdensome regulations, unleash American energy dominance, and make America the AI capital of the world. The EPA is working on clearing away red tape on the federal level, while GOP legislators in Pennsylvania are working on clearing away red tape on the state level. It will take both efforts to ensure the $92 billion pledged for energy projects in PA actually happens. Read More “EPA is “Clearing the Regulatory Path” for U.S. to Dominate AI”
Despite a “public outcry” (of 13 people), the Chesapeake City (Virginia) Council voted 6-3 on Tuesday night to approve a compressor station for Virginia Natural Gas (VNG). The City Council previously voted, on June 17, to deny permission. This was a reconsideration vote. The proposed site is already zoned industrial and has other VNG operations already in place. It’s not like it’s being constructed in the middle of a neighborhood. 
The Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) project is designed to increase Transco pipeline capacity and flows of Marcellus gas heading into New York City and other northeastern markets. Following some intense conversations between President Trump and New York Governor Kathy Hochul, she caved (according to the White House). She agreed to allow two long-stalled pipeline projects—the Constitution and NESE—to get built in NY in return for Trump allowing her to continue to sink $5 billion into an offshore wind project (see 
Here’s an important update for a project we haven’t discussed since last October. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is building a $2.1 billion state-of-the-art natural gas plant in Cumberland City, Tennessee (see 
Infinity Natural Resources (INR), headquartered in Morgantown, WV, focuses 100% on the Marcellus/Utica. The company went public earlier this year with a $265 million ($20/share) initial public offering, giving INR a market capitalization of $1.18 billion (see 
It’s one thing to openly criticize and attack fossil energy and the U.S.’s embrace of fossil energy. It’s an entirely different thing when U.S. taxpayers pay for those attacks. We’re speaking of the far-left-leaning International Energy Agency (IEA) and its corrupt leader, Dr. Fatih Birol. We’ve written plenty about the IEA over the years, noting its dramatic shift away from real science into leftist political science. The Trump administration has had enough of the IEA’s antics and has put the agency on notice that unless it changes the way it forecasts about energy, we’re out. The U.S. will withdraw its membership, and along with it, a substantial amount of the agency’s funding (millions of dollars). Birol can find someone else to fund his lavish lifestyle and jet-setting around the globe to bash fossil fuels. 
The largest amount of money to be invested in Pennsylvania in the coming decade by a single company, announced yesterday at Senator Dave McCormick’s Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit held in Pittsburgh, came from Blackstone, the world’s largest alternative asset manager. Blackstone pledged to invest *at least* $25 billion in the next 10 years in the Keystone State to (a) build data centers in the northeastern part of the state, and (b) build new Marcellus-fired power plants to provide electricity for those data centers. It’s a staggering amount of money. Blackstone President & COO, Jon Gray, was at yesterday’s event and said PA’s access to natural gas gives it a considerable advantage. “You can co-locate the data centers directly next to the source of power. That’s really the secret sauce here.” The Marcellus is responsible for Blackstone’s $25 billion investment! STAGGERING. 
In a day of big news, there was big news related to the largest gas-fired power plant project in the country, along with a massive data center complex, to be built at a former coal-fired power plant site in Indiana County, PA (see 
Data centers, which are buildings full of computers crunching search queries and other requests, along with artificial intelligence (AI), which uses data centers, are closely tied to the natural gas industry. Data centers require enormous amounts of electricity, and the fastest and most scalable solution to provide that electricity is to construct gas-fired power plants. You see the connection between data centers and Marcellus/Utica natural gas. According to MDN friend Mark Caskey, founder and CEO of Steel Nation, supplying electricity for data centers is natural gas’s next big role. He should know. 
You gotta hand it to Pennsylvania Democrats. They LOVE LOVE LOVE to tax other people’s money—especially companies and industries that they hate, like the state’s oil and gas industry. On July 8, PA State Senator Art Haywood (Democrat from Philadelphia) introduced PA Senate Bill (SB) 910, which slaps a 6.5% severance tax on the gross production of all oil and natural gas produced in the state. However, the bill goes further by repealing the provision in the 2012 Act 13 law that states that if a severance tax is ever implemented, the existing impact fee would be eliminated. In other words, Haywood’s bill eliminates the provision to end the impact fee, meaning the impact fee would remain in place. So, drillers would be taxed twice for the same thing. Fortunately, the bill is DOA in the Senate. 
Verne, Inc., a California-based energy company, announced last week that it will open its first manufacturing plant in the Marcellus Energy Park near Muncy, Lycoming County, PA. Verne developed a process to increase the density of hydrogen by storing the gas in a cold and compressed state, making it more efficient to transport in larger volumes. The new PA facility (which should be up and running in nine months) will build the storage tanks for this cold hydrogen. The hydrogen will be transported via truck to power data centers, drilling sites, construction sites, and more.