OH Legislators, New Bill, Encourage More Gas-Fired Power Plants
Ohio lawmakers are grappling with how to prepare the state for a surge in new power demand from AI data centers. In January, MDN told you that five Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) commissioners will decide some important guidelines about who should pay to build out new electricity sources for data centers—how much current ratepayers should be on the hook for with expanded power generation (see 5 PUCO Commissioners to Decide the Future of Data Centers in Ohio). We said the five commissioners would decide the future of Ohio’s data centers. However, that’s not quite accurate. It would be more accurate to say they will decide how the risk is distributed between data centers and power generators in cases where data centers want to connect to the local grid. There’s a whole other world of power plants on-site. Read More “OH Legislators, New Bill, Encourage More Gas-Fired Power Plants”
For the second week in a row, the Baker Hughes U.S. rig count regained some of the rigs lost in prior weeks. Two weeks ago, the rig count gained six rigs (see 
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management, is about to fly drones equipped with magnetometers to sniff out orphaned oil and gas wells in Van Wert County. The ODNR previously completed drone flights in Auglaize, Hancock, Mercer, and Wood counties. The ODNR issued a press release to inform (warn) about the upcoming flights, no doubt to prevent the mass hysteria we’ve seen in recent months about drone flights along the Eastern seaboard. 
At the end of the last legislative session in December, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, an extremist liberal, signed into law a new climate bill forcing a short list of Big Oil companies to pay $75 billion in ârecoveryâ assessments over the next 25 years for their alleged role in causing mythical global warming (see 
We suppose we shouldn’t be shocked, but we are. Reuters is exclusively reporting that Canadian pension fund CPP Investments, the majority owner of Encino Acquisition Partners (aka Encino Energy), is considering either a sale of the company or possibly an initial public offering (IPO) that values the company at roughly $7 billion. Encino’s claim to fame is that after taking over Chesapeake Energy’s Ohio Utica assets in 2018, it cracked the code on how to coax crude oil (condensate) out of the low-pressure Utica shale (see 
Prior to last week, the Baker Hughes national rig count had been in a freefall for weeks, dropping to a 3+ year low of 576 (see 
For the week of Jan 20 – 26, permits issued in the Marcellus/Utica to drill new shale wells fell off a proverbial cliff. Two weeks ago, 41 new permits were issued. Last week, the number plummeted to just seven new permits issued. Perhaps the most interesting thing about last week’s numbers is that NO new permits were issued in the Keystone State (PA). We believe that’s the first time we’ve seen no new permits in PA. We wonder if there’s a problem with the reporting system (the state DEP’s reporting system is known to occasionally have issues). We’ll check again next week to see if PA’s numbers get updated. Meanwhile, there were four new permits for the Buckeye State (OH) and three for the Mountain State (WV). 
Last fall, MDN told you about a newly formed drilling company that aims to target the Ohio Utica Shale, a company called Tiburon Oil & Gas Partners, LLC (see 
MDN reported in October that Marcellus/Utica driller Infinity Natural Resources (INR) intended to file an initial public offering (IPO) with the Securities and Exchange Commission hoping to raise $100 million (see 