Shapiro Aide: 100 Data Centers Floated in PA, Only 2 Fully Permitted
Ever wonder how many of those breathless AI data center announcements in Pennsylvania are actually real? Somebody in Gov. Josh Shapiro’s office finally counted. Speaking Wednesday (Aug. 12) to the Department of Environmental Protection’s Environmental Justice Advisory Board, Deputy Chief of Staff Sam Robinson walked through the funnel — from roughly 100 projects that have been talked about somewhere, down to just two that have every permit they need to start building phase one. That’s a number every producer, midstream planner, and gas-fired power developer in the Marcellus ought to write down. Read More “Shapiro Aide: 100 Data Centers Floated in PA, Only 2 Fully Permitted”
Quinnipiac University released a new poll of Pennsylvania registered voters on July 15, and one question in it should worry everyone who makes a living from Marcellus gas. Asked whether they would support or oppose building an AI data center in their community, 74% of Pennsylvania voters said “oppose,” 16% said “support,” and 10% offered no opinion. That’s a jump from Quinnipiac’s February 25 poll, when the split was 68% opposed and 20% in favor. The opposition is bipartisan — 64% of Republicans, 82% of Democrats, and 77% of independents all said no thanks. Three-quarters of voters (76%) say they’re following data center news either very closely (26%) or somewhat closely (50%). And Gov. Josh Shapiro isn’t getting credit either: just 24% approve of how he’s handling data centers in Pennsylvania, while 34% disapprove and a whopping 42% have no opinion. The survey polled 895 registered voters July 9-13, with a margin of error of +/- 4.3 percentage points. 
Peregrine Energy Partners, the Dallas-based royalty buyer we’ve been tracking since 2019, is back in the Marcellus/Utica with its checkbook open. Yesterday (Aug. 4), the company announced it closed five separate mineral and royalty deals — two of them right here in the M-U — totaling roughly 3,680 net royalty acres and interests in more than 1,240 producing wells. The first Appalachian deal is a cash-flowing overriding royalty portfolio in Susquehanna County, PA, covering about 936 gross acres and 86 producing horizontal Coterra Energy (now Devon Energy) wells, with more than 50 DUCs and PUDs behind them in both the Upper and Lower Marcellus. 
Every so often the antis tell you exactly what they’re up to, and you just have to sit back and enjoy it. On Saturday, Inside Climate News ran a story on the ongoing campaign by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP), Clean Air Council, and their friends to jack up setbacks — the required distance between a well pad and the nearest building — from the current 500 feet to distances that would end new shale drilling in Pennsylvania. The new twist? They’ve hitched the campaign to the data center boom. More data centers means more gas, and more gas means (in their telling) more danger, so hurry up and pass the rules. It’s the same petition MDN has been tracking since 2024, dressed in a 2026 outfit. 
Last year, we reported on a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision issued in the case of Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Game Commission v. Thomas E. Proctor Heirs Trust (see 
An important (precedential) court ruling to alert Pennsylvania surface (and mineral rights) owners to. The Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled earlier this month that an oil-and-gas mineral rights owner does not have an automatic, unrestricted right to place a well on a separately owned surface estate. When the deed or lease contains no express surface-access right, the mineral owner must establish that using that surface is “strictly necessary”—not merely reasonable—to reach and develop the underlying oil and gas. The case in question concerns land in Westmoreland County but will almost certainly apply to other locations as well. 
Energy Transfer has asked the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) to restructure and dissolve the Sunoco Pipeline Company, separating its pipeline assets between two new entities. Energy Transfer NE NGL Pipelines LLC would own and operate the Mariner East system and other natural gas liquids pipelines, while Energy Transfer RP Pipelines LLC would control refined petroleum product pipelines. The proposal also would transfer Sunoco’s public utility operating certificates. Formal protests and intervention petitions are due July 27, 2026. 
On July 12, the Pennsylvania Senate and House passed, and Governor Josh Shapiro signed into law, a $50.84 billion General Fund budget. It was only 12 days late this year. This is a net-positive budget for the Marcellus/Utica industry. It contains no new taxes or fees on production, delivers a long-sought modernization that unlocks the deep Utica play, and builds legal scaffolding favorable to gas-fired power for data centers. The only new obligations — full-cement plugging and (for midstream-adjacent projects) data-center reporting — are modest. 
A long-running and favorite tactic of the environmental left is to use our own judicial system against us. On the federal level, foreign-backed groups like the Sierra Club, Earthworks, Food & Water Watch, and others have (in the past) challenged new pipeline or drilling projects, filing appeal after appeal up the line, blocking construction until said lawsuits were resolved. Last June (2025), the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) took away the left’s ability to block construction while lawsuits are filed and played out (see 
Pennsylvania radical green groups, including PennFuture, the Center for Coalfield Justice, and the Sierra Club Pennsylvania Chapter, continued a full-court press against AI data centers in the Keystone State yesterday. Just yesterday, we reported that Food & Water Watch had assembled dozens (perhaps one hundred at most) protesters in Harrisburg on Tuesday to support a bill (Senate Bill 1359) that would (if signed by Governor Shapiro) ban new data center development in PA for three years (see 
The thing about the political left is that they NEVER give up. EVER. And so, neither must we. The left wants to destroy new shale drilling in Pennsylvania. They couldn’t do it via regulation. They couldn’t convince a majority of residents that shale drilling is bad. So they search out other ways to make it happen. Among those ways are efforts to increase setbacks (distance from wells to homes and other structures) from the current 500 feet to over 3,200 feet, which would ban drilling in 95%+ of the state (see 
Just yesterday, MDN brought you the great news of the economic and jobs boom happening in Indiana County (Homer City), for a gas-fired AI data center project happening at what was Pennsylvania’s largest coal-fired power plant complex (see 
Last week, MDN brought you the great news that the Pennsylvania impact “fee” (tax on drilling) generated $243.8 million in fees collected from producers for the 2025 reporting year, a whopping 48% increase over 2024 (see 
Pennsylvania’s Senate Republicans are speaking truth to power, calling out PA Democrat Governor Josh Shapiro’s policies as one of the primary reasons why PA residents pay more for electricity. And Joshie doesn’t like being called out. State Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward argues the state is losing out under a roughly $325-per-megawatt-day price cap on PJM Interconnection’s capacity auctions, approved by the federal government after a lawsuit by Gov. Josh Shapiro (see 
Pennsylvania has become a hotspot for data center proposals, prompting community backlash, writes Penn State law professor Michael Helbing, whose hometown is Archbald, PA, a suburb of Scranton. You may recall that last week we wrote about another Scranton suburb (virtually next door to Archbald, see the map) by the name of Olyphant, and how the leaders of that borough had developed zoning regulations to protect residents yet allow data center projects to proceed (see