Surging Interest in Building Data Centers in PA; 6 Announced So Far
In early April, MDN brought you the exciting news that THE largest gas-fired power plant in the country, along with a MASSIVE data center complex, will be built at a former coal-fired power plant site in Indiana County, PA (see Largest Gas-Fired Power Plant in the U.S. Coming in Western Pa.). The site will be transformed into a more than 3,200-acre natural gas-powered data center campus, complete with a 4.5 gigawatt Marcellus-fired power plant. Not long after, we told you about another announced data center and gas-fired power plant, this one coming to Washington County, PA (see ‘Another Data Center Announced for SWPA; Range to Provide NatGas’). Liberty Energy Inc., Imperial Land Corporation, and Range Resources announced a strategic alliance to support the development of a state-of-the-art gas-fired power plant and data center within the Fort Cherry Development District in Robinson Township. However, those aren’t the only two announced data center projects in the Keystone State. Read More “Surging Interest in Building Data Centers in PA; 6 Announced So Far”
Et tu, Brute? We’ve poked fun at “peak oil” and “peak gas” quacks for years (over a decade). People like Art Berman who pronounce, on a regular basis, that we’ve finally hit peak oil (or gas) production and/or demand, and that from here on out, fossil fuels will decline. They’re wrong every single time. Yet now, none other than the number crunchers at the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) are making their own “peak” predictions. In its latest Annual Energy Outlook (AEO) for 2025, the EIA says we will likely see U.S. crude oil output hit a peak of 14 million barrels per day by 2027. Natural gas has a longer fuse, hitting a high of 43.44 trillion cubic feet per annum in 2032. 
Net Power, backed by the Rice brothers (of Rice Energy and EQT fame), is on a mission to develop and deploy revolutionary new technology to capture every last molecule of carbon dioxide from natural gas-fired power plants (see 
It seems our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), was populated by a lot of swamp creatures. Multiple sources are whispering to Reuters that 100 or more of the agency’s 350 employees (somewhere between 25% and 40%) either already have or soon will leave their jobs at the agency. They have opted to accept President Trump’s offer to government workers to leave with generous benefits now or risk being fired later. Reuters, which is typically an unbiased news source (one of the few), is throwing shade that important reports produced by EIA will no longer be produced, given the lack of manpower. 
This is shameful. A Pennsylvania government agency, the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), has aligned itself with an extreme leftwing organization to attack the PJM Interconnection electric grid in a bid to paper over the failed policies of PA Governor Josh Shapiro. In particular, so-called “Acting” Secretary of the DEP, Jessica Shirley, has proven she is no longer fit to lead the agency. The PA Senate should refuse to confirm her and bounce her out immediately. Shirley aligned herself with the radical left-wing organization called Evergreen Action to promote a sham/fake “report” by a well-known Democrat organization called Synapse Energy Economics (that works exclusively for left-wing groups) attacking PJM with false claims that it has a “broken” electric generation project approval process. 
In what appears to be a coordinated effort, the PJM Interconnect electric grid is under attack by leftists. As we point out in our lead story today, the Pennsylvania DEP has prostituted itself politically and joined with extremist left-wing organizations to attack PJM. At the same time, three deeply blue (economically failed) states, New Jersey, Maryland, and Illinois, filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) asking the agency to force PJM to rerun an electric capacity auction, claiming such a move would save ratepayers $5 billion. These states’ failed policies in FORCING unreliable solar and wind on the public caused the high-priced electricity problem in the first place. So now, the perpetrators are blaming the victim—PJM. 
Energy Transfer’s (ET) Lake Charles LNG project is in the news again. Last week we told you that ET had landed a new partner to help pay for the project, MidOcean Energy, which will cover 30% of the cost of building the plant (see 
The on again, off again, on again, off again plan to build a massive data center in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, with a 3,500-megawatt gas-fired power plant is now off again, permanently. Last October, Balico applied to rezone more than 2,200 acres for a proposed campus in Pittsylvania County, Va., that would include its own massive on-site gas-fired power plant complex using Marcellus/Utica molecules from the Mountain Valley Pipeline (see 
After liquefying and exporting over 400 cargoes of LNG from March 1, 2022, through this month, Venture Global says its Calcasieu Pass (CP) LNG export facility in Louisiana is now officially open for business—three years after it began shipping LNG. Venture Global claimed the CP facility was not commercially ready until now. Venture Global has been selling cargo after cargo of LNG on the open “spot” market, making two, three, or four times the money it could make by selling the cargoes to its legally contracted customers at a predetermined price. At last count, Venture Global has made over $20 billion by selling cargoes on the open spot market. 
The name Philadelphia Gas Works (PGW) pretty much says it all. PGW is a natural gas utility serving the Philly region. It’s not an electric company; it’s a natural gas company. So, it will probably come as no surprise that PGW belongs to a trade organization called the American Public Gas Association (APGA). Indeed, PGW is the largest member of the APGA. And it would probably not surprise you to learn that the APGA supports President Trump’s efforts to pause and defund much of the money not already distributed from the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which was Biden’s Green New Deal aimed at using billions of OUR taxpayer dollars to try to destroy fossil energy, including natural gas. The swampy left, including its apologists in the media (i.e., PBS), are trying to shame PGW into dropping its membership in the APGA, implying PGW is (via APGA) opposed to having its business destroyed using $700 million from the IRA earmarked for Philly. Imagine that! 
ArcLight Capital Partners, an infrastructure investment firm focused on energy and related infrastructure, announced it is buying out the ownership interests of Osaka Gas USA Corporation and Kyuden International Americas Inc. (both Japanese companies) in Kleen Energy Systems, LLC. Kleen Energy owns Kleen Power, a 620 megawatt (MW) natural gas-fired power plant in Middletown, Connecticut. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. 
Cayuga Station, owned by Duke Energy, is a three-unit coal-fired power plant built between 1970 and 1993 in Vermillion County, Indiana. The existing plant produces as much as 1,040 megawatts (MW) of electricity. Duke recently filed a request with the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC) for permission to build two new gas-fired plants at the Cayuga site to replace the coal-fired units. The combined output of the new gas-fired plants will be 1,510 MW. The plan is to build and commission the gas-fired plants first and then shut down the coal-fired plants. 
An interesting report from BTU Analytics connects many of the dots that (for us) have been missing with respect to hydrogen production from natural gas that captures carbon dioxide in the process—called “blue hydrogen.” As you know, we’ve been skeptical of the big push to produce hydrogen as a magic replacement for other forms of energy, particularly natural gas. Environmentalists pay lip service to loving hydrogen because it burns “clean” with no CO2 emissions. Why not just burn natural gas (and capture the CO2) instead of going through the time and expense of converting natural gas into hydrogen? Please, don’t ask such common-sense questions. It marks you as a MAGA extremist.