Shippingport Gas Fuel Yard Permit Shows Data Center Hub Taking Shape
A new permit application for the natural gas “plumbing” at the old Bruce Mansfield coal plant site in Shippingport (Beaver County) has landed at the PA Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). Shippingport Power Station, LLC wants a stormwater permit for a 14.5-acre natural gas “fuel yard” on part of the former coal plant property. Next door, Aligned Data Centers broke ground last month on a 2-gigawatt data center campus. A stormwater permit isn’t the most exciting document you’ll read this week. What makes it news is that it shows this project moving from press releases to bulldozers. Read More “Shippingport Gas Fuel Yard Permit Shows Data Center Hub Taking Shape”
The highly functional and responsible Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC), unlike its dysfunctional and irresponsible counterpart, the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), continues to support the shale energy industry by approving water withdrawals and consumptive use requests for responsible, safe shale drilling. The SRBC published a notice in the October 24th Pennsylvania Bulletin that the SRBC approved and/or renewed 33 general water use permits in September for individual shale gas well drilling pads in Bradford, Lycoming, McKean, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Tioga, and Wyoming counties. 
State Sen. Gene Yaw (R-23), who has chaired the Senate Environmental Resources & Energy Committee since 2013, wants Pennsylvania’s data centers to pay their own version of the shale impact fee. On Thursday (Oct. 23), Yaw sent a co-sponsorship memo to all Senate members announcing plans for an annual, statewide “data center impact fee” modeled on Act 13 of 2012, the law that created the impact fee drillers have paid every year since. Yaw says the fee would be based on each facility’s size and electricity demand, and would be paid every year a data center operates. That’s different from today’s system, where towns rely on one-time deals negotiated with developers. The money would go to host communities and statewide programs, just like the shale fee. What’s not in the memo? Any dollar figures. Here’s the memo, followed by what it means (and what it doesn’t say). 
Early last week, we told you Europe blinked on its crazy methane import rules, with the European Commission (the EU’s executive branch) proposing a one-year delay (see 
Back in April, MDN told you about Enbridge’s ~$300 million job to move the natural gas lines that hang off the Bourne and Sagamore bridges and run them under the Cape Cod Canal instead (see 
Did the ground rumble in Westmoreland County on Sunday, October 4, because of fracking? The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) asked that question, checked EQT’s nearby Porter well pad, and found nothing abnormal. EQT’s pressure logs for that day were clean, no violations were cited, and DEP asked for more paperwork. That’s good news for EQT, even if the headline you may have seen elsewhere makes it sound much more ominous. 
Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh, just became the first county in the nation to force private employers to pay for 12 weeks of parental leave — at up to 100% of wages, with the employer footing the entire bill. County Executive Sara Innamorato signed the regulation yesterday, two days after County Council approved it 11-4. Here’s what caught our eye (thanks to a heads-up from PIOGA): the mandate doesn’t care where your headquarters is. If you’re a driller or service company with 15 or more employees anywhere, and one of your employees works 80 hours in Allegheny County in a year, that worker is covered. 
Another one bites the dust in northeastern Pennsylvania. On Wednesday night, Archbald Borough Council (Lackawanna County) voted 7-0 to deny a zoning request for the Wildcat Ridge Data Center Campus, a 14-building AI “hyperscale” project proposed for roughly 575 acres on the mountainside above Business Route 6. The campus would have needed 1.6 gigawatts (GW) of electricity, more than 3.3 million gallons of water per day in summer, and 588 diesel-powered backup generators. About 175-200 residents packed the borough building’s gym and erupted in cheers when the vote came down. The developer, Brooklyn-based Cornell Realty Management, isn’t talking, but just about everyone in the room expects an appeal to county court. Why should Marcellus folks care? Because 1.6 GW of new, around-the-clock electric demand is, in our neck of the woods, a gas demand story. 
Yesterday, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) threw another party, this time to celebrate the 500th orphan and abandoned well plugged since Josh Shapiro became governor in January 2023. Good for them. Seriously. But we can’t help noticing that Ohio plugged 480 orphan wells in 2025 alone, nearly as many as PA has plugged in almost four years. From 2023 through 2025, Ohio plugged 1,215 old wells. That’s 2.4 times PA’s entire Shapiro-era total, and it doesn’t count a single well Ohio has plugged so far in 2026.
Here’s a rare thing in Washington: a bill that passed both the House and Senate without a fight, helps drillers, and doesn’t cost taxpayers a dime. On Tuesday, President Trump signed the License to Drill Act into law. The new law keeps alive a 20-year-old program called the Permit Processing Improvement Fund (PPIF). Under the PPIF, drillers who want to drill on federal land pay a fee for each drilling permit application, and that money goes to pay the federal workers who process those permits. The program was set to expire on Sept. 30, but now runs through fiscal year 2037. Most of the action is out West. But with the first federal leases in Ohio’s Wayne National Forest in nearly a decade now in drillers’ hands, it matters a little bit here too. 
So much for the charm offensive. Five weeks after NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy sweetened their $67 billion merger with bigger bill credits, 1,000 new jobs and a shiny new Richmond office tower (see 
The Upper Burrell Township (Westmoreland County, PA) Planning Commission voted 5-0 Tuesday night to recommend the township’s data center ordinance, handing it to the three township supervisors. The supervisors hold a public hearing at 6 p.m. tonight (Oct. 22), followed by a special meeting to consider adopting it. They’re racing the clock: the township’s data center moratorium expires Nov. 2, just 11 days from now. Last month we told you the draft quietly requires every new data center to make its own around-the-clock (“baseload”) power, which in southwest Pennsylvania means natural gas. As best we can tell, that requirement survived. 
Back on Sept. 1, we told you Dominion Energy’s monster 3,000-megawatt (3 gigawatt) gas-fired power plant in Cumberland County, Virginia, had cleared its first hurdle when the county planning commission voted 5-1 to recommend approval (see