Williams Announces Transco Expansion to Flow More M-U to Virginia
During last week’s first quarter update from Williams, management announced a new project called the Transco Power Express expansion. The project will expand Transco capacity by a whopping 950 MMcf/d (nearly a full Bcf) to flow more Marcellus/Utica molecules to the power-hungry Virginia market. The Virginia market is power hungry because of the data centers already built there, and the many more planned for the state. The Power Express project, if built, is expected to go online in the third quarter of 2030 (five years from now). Read More “Williams Announces Transco Expansion to Flow More M-U to Virginia”
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Shell’s chemical division, including Monaca, poised for rebound; Nighttime flaring at Shell plastics plant lit up Beaver County ‘like dawn’; 34 organizations sign letter urging Pa. to adopt measures to protect against shale drilling; Pennsylvania weighs how to manage power-hungry data centers; Shale coalition leader knows the drill, advocates for it; GOP lawmakers, energy stakeholders push for natural gas expansion to boost jobs, bolster grid; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Mass. orders utilities to spend less ratepayer money on natural gas pipelines; Commonwealth LNG inks 20-year offtake; NATIONAL: Secretary of Energy Chris Wright claims he’s preaching ‘climate realism’; U.S. exports of natural gas liquids touch record high in April; Strong European demand pushes U.S. LNG exports up by 20%; US LNG exports surge to new highs on strong buying by Europe; DOE announces new leadership to tackle challenges of growing energy demand. 
For the week of April 21 – 27, the number of permits issued to drill new wells in the Marcellus/Utica was down nine from the previous week. Last week, 24 new permits were issued in the M-U. In the Keystone State (PA), 17 new permits were issued. Both Coterra Energy in the northeastern part of the state and EQT Corporation in the southwestern corner received six permits each. Coterra’s permits were all issued for the same pad. EQT received five permits for a single pad in Greene County, and one permit for a pad in Washington County. Range Resources received four permits for a single pad in Beaver County, and Olympus Energy scored one permit in Westmoreland County. 
A brief note to let our valued subscribers know that MDN will not be published from Thursday, May 1, to Friday, May 9. We will return with full-strength MDN on Monday, May 12. MDN editor Jim Willis and his wife are traveling to South Carolina to watch their youngest son graduate with a PhD! We are enormously proud of his achievements. Following graduation, the family will travel to Myrtle Beach for some R&R.
Last Thursday, West Virginia Governor Pat Morrisey signed Senate Bill (SB) 627 into law. SB 627 removes the previous ban on leasing “pore spaces” under state-owned parks. However, the bill explicitly prohibits any surface disturbance on state park land for drilling or injection. All lease revenues generated must be used exclusively for improvements and maintenance at the location where the leased pore space is situated. 
In January, MDN reported that the PJM Interconnection electrical grid operator, covering Pennsylvania (along with all or parts of 12 other states and the District of Columbia), had caved to the political demands of PA Gov. Josh Shapiro to artificially cap the prices of the next capacity auction scheduled for July 2025 (see 
Houston, we have a problem. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the data centers (banks of hundreds or thousands of computers) that support AI are being planned right now. All those data centers need reliable power supplies. Unreliable solar and wind are not up to the task, so the companies building those data centers (like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and others) are turning to natural gas. Which we love! But here’s the problem: the turbines needed to generate the electricity (turbines that burn natural gas) are now on backorder… until 2028 or later. 
Speaking of gas turbines and our current inability to produce them quickly enough, we came across a somewhat related story from Reuters. The reporters from Reuters are sounding the alarm that U.S. LNG export facilities may soon have to compete for natural gas supplies with power plants needed to power AI data centers. The result is that the price of natural gas will increase, and in some cases, it may not be available for exports. Of course, the free market (capitalism) will sort this out on its own, but in the meantime, there may be some tension. 
The Trump administration recently issued rules that require at least 1% of the natural gas shipped overseas to be carried on U.S.-built tankers, beginning in 2029. The U.S. is the world’s number one global exporter of LNG (liquefied natural gas). However, the U.S. does not build *any* of the specialized LNG cargo carriers used to send that fuel abroad. In a letter to the Trump administration last week, the American Petroleum Institute (API) stated that the oil and gas industry could not comply with the rule and urged Trump officials to reconsider it. 
What have we been telling you for YEARS? That natural gas is not a “bridge” to an unreliable renewable energy nirvana, but is, instead, the destination (see 
In January, MDN brought you the news that TECfusions, based in Tampa, Florida, had purchased 1,395 acres in Upper Burrell (Westmoreland County), PA, for a groundbreaking data center project called TECfusions Keystone Connect (see 
A power project we’ve been tracking since 2017 is a 620-megawatt (MW) Marcellus-fired electric plant in Greene County, PA, called the Hill Top Energy Center (
In December 2022, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) approved permission for New Jersey Natural Gas (NJNG) to build a pipeline regulator station in Holmdel, New Jersey. What does a regulator station do? It reduces pressure on the existing underground natural gas pipelines in the area, which run underneath Holmdel Township and throughout Monmouth County. Ultimately, a regulator station will ensure the reliability of the pipelines and the gas that flows in the area. The new station will replace a currently operating temporary regulator station. Yet the “leaders” of Holmdel voted in 2023 to appeal the BPU decision to court, allocating up to $20,000 of taxpayer money for legal fees, which turned out to be a fruitless attempt at overturning the BPU decision (see 
Dominion Energy and its operations in Chesterfield County, Virginia (near Richmond) are in the news again, but not for the same reason you may think. We previously told you about Dominion’s project to build a “peaker” electric generating plant in Chesterfield (see