Back from the Dead: Mon County, WV Gas Plant Project Sold to AEP
Back in January 2022, we brought you what looked like a milestone: the WV Dept. of Environmental Protection had issued a construction permit for a big Marcellus gas-fired power plant next door to the Longview coal plant in Maidsville, Monongalia County (see WV DEP Approves Construction Permit for Gas-Fired Elec Plant). We said it would finally be the first large-scale gas plant built in the Mountain State during the shale era. We were wrong. Not one shovel of dirt got turned. Read More “Back from the Dead: Mon County, WV Gas Plant Project Sold to AEP”
In February, FirstEnergy subsidiaries Mon Power and Potomac Edison announced they had selected a 35-acre site in Maidsville (Monongalia County), West Virginia, for a new 1,200-megawatt natural gas power plant (see 
The Marcellus/Utica region received 31 new drilling permits last week, June 15 – 21, up from the pathetic 2 permits issued two weeks ago. However, not all 31 permits reported last week were issued last week. Ohio, which is increasingly tardy in updating its public reports, included permits in last week’s report that should have been in the previous week’s. Last week, Pennsylvania issued 18 permits. Ohio issued 9 new permits, all of which should have been reported two weeks ago. West Virginia issued 4 new permits last week. The drillers who received new permits included: EOG Resources, EQT, Gulfport Energy, Infinity Natural Resources, JKLM Energy, LOLA Energy, Northeast Natural Energy, PennEnergy Resources, and Sabre Energy. 
Hope Gas is a Local Distribution Company (LDC, i.e., utility company) that provides gas service to approximately 140,000 residential, industrial, and commercial customers in 39 West Virginia counties. The company monitors and maintains over 7,000 miles of pipelines that safely deliver West Virginia natural gas to many homes and commercial and industrial sites. In September 2023, Hope Gas asked the West Virginia Public Service Commission for permission to build a new 30-mile pipeline in Monongalia County (see 
Evolution Well Services, headquartered in Houston with a regional office in Pittsburgh, specializes in “electric” fracking — using natural gas from the well pad (instead of diesel fuel) to power turbines to create electricity that drives fracking pumps. We’ve written about Evolution’s e-fracking work in the Marcellus/Utica for years (