For ten months, MDN has documented a one-sided war. Big Green swapped its anti-fracking playbook for an anti-data center playbook, and nobody with money showed up on the other side. That finally changed last week. Two separate, well-funded groups launched within 48 hours to defend data center construction — and Ohio is target number one for both. Read More “Ohio a Battleground as Pro-Data Center Groups Launch”
Ohio has asked PJM to dust off a rarely used piece of grid-planning machinery — a tool invented to string wires to offshore wind farms — and use it instead to speed up $4.2 billion in new high-voltage power lines to the 10-gigawatt SoftBank data center and gas plant complex at Piketon. We got our hands on the letter. It’s dated June 15, 2026, from PUCO Federal Energy Advocate Sarah J. Parrot to PJM President and CEO David E. Mills, and it’s been sitting quietly for nearly three months. It surfaced this week because PJM is briefing its Transmission Expansion Advisory Committee (TEAC) on the request today, Sept. 8, to use the “state agreement approach.” Read More “Ohio Uses NJ Wind Tool to Fast-Track Piketon Gas/AI Power Lines”
The Marcellus/Utica region received 39 new drilling permits last week, August 24 – 30, up significantly from the 19 permits issued two weeks ago. Pennsylvania finally bounced back, issuing the vast majority of the new permits, with 25. Ohio issued 8 permits. And West Virginia issued 6 new permits. The drillers who received new permits were: Antero Resources, Campbell Oil & Gas, CNX Resources, EOG Resources, EQT, Expand Energy, Infinity Natural Resources, PennEnergy Resources, and Repsol Oil & Gas. Read More “39 New Shale Well Permits Reported for PA-OH-WV Aug 24 – 30”
EQT is planning another pipeline — and this one is big. Through a brand-new subsidiary called Appalachian Transmission Gateway LLC (ATG), the Marcellus/Utica’s largest driller has opened bidding on the “POWER Pipeline,” a 42-inch, 50-mile line that would carry a full 1 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of gas from Greene County, Pennsylvania, west to the Clarington hub in Monroe County, Ohio. The open season quietly began Aug. 26 and runs through Oct. 26. We found no press release announcing it — the notice simply went up, and the trade press caught it a week later. Read More “EQT Quietly Launches Open Season for New 1 Bcf/d PA-OH Pipeline”
At the Aug. 27 open house for the Piketon power project, an SB Energy poster showing an aerial view of the site drew the biggest crowd in the gym. It wasn’t the environmental impact board or the electricity charts. It was the map — because it showed people their own houses. The Columbus Dispatch was in the room. What its reporter found is a story MDN readers are going to see repeated across Ohio over the next decade, and it is worth understanding clearly before it lands in your county and before you get a knock on your door asking if you want to sell. Read More “Landowners Take Note: Data Center Buyouts Are Not Royalty Checks”
A pile of poster boards in a YMCA gymnasium is not usually where you find the most important number in a $33 billion project. But on Aug. 27, at the Pike County YMCA in Waverly, Ohio, an SB Energy executive told a Columbus Dispatch reporter something that ought to get every Utica producer’s attention: the turbines are already bought. Not ordered. Not “in negotiations.” Bought — for the first phase of what will be the largest gas-fired power plant in American history. Read More “Massive OH Project Has Its Turbines; Changes the Utica Gas Math”
The Marcellus/Utica finally moved last week — in the wrong direction. Ohio dropped a rig, taking the M-U to 34 and ending a three-week stall at 35. Nationally, the count didn’t budge at all, holding at 588. But that flat number hides something: oil rigs fell five while gas rigs gained five, and not one of those new gas rigs showed up here. Frac spreads slipped again too, down four to 180 — the second straight weekly decline. Read More “Ohio Sheds a Rig, M-U Falls to 34; National Count Holds at 588”
Ohio pumped roughly 2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas out of the ground last year, most of it from the Utica Shale. And yet 43 families in Washington County are being told to find another way to heat their homes by October 29 — because the wells that feed their gas line are running out of gas. The Marietta Times and the Parkersburg News & Sentinel both reported last week that Knox Energy has notified 43 customers in the Belpre area that their natural gas service ends October 29. The reason isn’t a billing dispute or a rate case. It’s geology. Read More “Ohio Utility Cuts Off 43 Gas Customers as Old Wells Run Dry”
The Marcellus/Utica region received 19 new drilling permits last week, August 17 – 23, down from the 27 permits issued two weeks ago. For the second week in a row, Pennsylvania issued the fewest new permits, with 2 (after issuing just 4 two weeks ago). What’s up with PA? Ohio issued 4 permits. And West Virginia took the prize last week, issuing 13 new permits. The drillers who received new permits were: Expand Energy (6), Infinity Natural Resources (1), Northeast Natural Energy (1), Pennsylvania General Energy (2), Tiburon Oil & Gas (3), and Vickery Energy (6). Read More “19 New Shale Well Permits Reported for PA-OH-WV Aug 17 – 23”
The PJM market monitor asked federal regulators to kill Hull Street Energy’s purchase of two gas-fired peaking plants unless Hull Street promised not to point them at data centers. On August 13, FERC said no — and said the monitor hadn’t supported its argument. Thirteen days later, the deal closed. Hull Street Energy (HSE), a private equity firm in the Washington, D.C. area, announced yesterday that it completed the acquisition of the Lee County Generating Station in Dixon, Illinois, and the Tait Electric Generating Station near Dayton, Ohio, from Rockland Capital. HSE calls the pair the “GridFlex Portfolio” and has folded it into Milepost Power, its thermal generation platform. Read More “FERC Clears Hull Street Peaker Buy, Rebuffs PJM Market Monitor”
Thirteen months ago, MDN told you Ohio had just handed the Eastgate Regional Council of Governments $250,000 to find out whether a natural gas pipeline could be built up the middle of State Route 11, from the Ohio River at East Liverpool all the way north to Lake Erie at Ashtabula (see OH Spending $250K to Study Utica to Lake Erie Pipe for LNG Exports). Yesterday the answer landed. The 142-page “Lake to River: Oil & Gas Pipeline Feasibility Study” (full copy below), prepared by consulting firm Verdantas, says yes — a 93-mile line is technically buildable inside the existing state right-of-way, would move up to 3 billion cubic feet per day, and would cost up to $1.36 billion. What it doesn’t have yet is a builder or a customer. Read More “Study Says 93-Mile Ohio “Lake to River” Gas Pipeline is Doable”
Ohio’s next governor will inherit a program that has already banked $314 million for the state by leasing the rock a mile below its parks and wildlife areas. Two of the three candidates on the November ballot want to shut it down. Cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer put four questions about drilling under state-owned land to Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, Democrat Amy Acton, and Libertarian Don Kissick as part of its 2026 gubernatorial issues series. The answers could hardly be more different. Read More “Ohio Gov. Race: Ramaswamy Pro-Frack, Acton Wants a Ban”
The Marcellus/Utica region received 27 new drilling permits last week, August 10 – 16, up significantly from the 8 permits issued two weeks ago. In something of a reversal, Pennsylvania turned in the fewest new permits, just 4. Ohio issued the most permits, with 16, and West Virginia issued 7 permits. The drillers who received new permits were: Antero Resources (6), Ascent Resources (5), EOG Resources (8), Expand Energy (4), Jay-Bee Oil & Gas (1), LOLA Energy (1), Range Resources (1), and Seneca Resources (1). Read More “27 New Shale Well Permits Reported for PA-OH-WV Aug 10 – 16”
Score one for the good guys. The Ohio Power Siting Board (OPSB) voted yesterday (Aug. 20) to hand Chestnut Run Energy LLC its Certificate of Environmental Compatibility and Public Need — the golden ticket needed to build a 1,300-megawatt (MW), $2 billion natural gas-fired power plant in Washington Township, Carroll County. That’s smack in the middle of Utica Shale country. MDN first told you about this project back in April (see Chestnut Run Energy to Build 1.3 GW Power Plant in Carroll County). Now it’s official. Read More “Ohio OKs First Non-Data-Center Gas Plant Since 2019 in Carroll Co.”
The Columbus Dispatch — a paper based 120 miles northwest of the action — parachuted into Marietta, Ohio, yesterday with a long story about shale wastewater injection wells that leads with the words “radioactive,” “toxic,” and “Russian roulette,” and waits ten paragraphs to tell readers the one fact that matters most: no evidence of drinking water contamination has turned up. Not now. Not in 15 years. We’ve covered this fight since 2025, and we’ll say again what we said in July — there IS a real problem here, but it isn’t the one the Dispatch is selling. Read More “Columbus Dispatch Takes Another Swing at Marietta Injection Wells”
It’s official. In June, we told you OpenAI was in “advanced negotiations” to lease the gargantuan 10-gigawatt (GW) data center campus rising on federal land in Piketon (Pike County), Ohio (see OpenAI in Talks to Lease OH Data Center, Largest Gas Power in U.S.). Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported the ink is dry. OpenAI has signed a 20-year lease for the whole 10 GW campus with SB Energy, the SoftBank subsidiary developing the site — and chipmaker Nvidia is standing behind the deal with a financial backstop worth up to $105 billion. Why should Utica landowners care about a Silicon Valley lease? Because the electricity feeding this monster comes from a 9.2-GW natural gas power plant, and that gas has to come from somewhere. That somewhere is under your feet. Read More “OpenAI Signs 10 GW Ohio Data Center Lease, Utica Gas Wins Big”