West Virginia Stays Red, But Data Center Backlash Costs GOP Seats
On Tuesday, while Democrats were flipping Congress and the Pennsylvania Senate, West Virginia did… mostly what West Virginia does. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito won a third term, both GOP congressmen won again, and Republicans kept big supermajorities in the Legislature. But dig one layer down, and there’s a warning sign for anyone who profits from Mountain State shale. Democrats more than doubled their seats in Charleston, and the issue that got them there was data centers. Specifically, House Bill 2014, the 2025 law that wiped out local control over data centers and the gas-fired “microgrids” built to power them. Here’s what happened and why it matters for WV gas. Read More “West Virginia Stays Red, But Data Center Backlash Costs GOP Seats”
If you were waiting for NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy to back up a bigger truck of cash to Virginia’s door (we were), you’ll have to keep waiting. On Tuesday, Nov. 3, the two companies filed rebuttal testimony with Virginia’s State Corporation Commission (SCC), the agency reviewing their $67 billion merger. They said “yes” to 101 of the 117 conditions that SCC staff and the Attorney General’s consumer counsel asked for, and “yes, with changes” to 13 more. But there’s no new money this time. The bill credit is the same $10 a month for four years they offered in September. What’s new is fine print: a conditional financial firewall around Dominion’s Virginia utility and two independent board members. And the companies flatly said “no” to Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s six-year rate freeze, plus a three-year freeze on rate increases pushed by the Attorney General’s consumer counsel. The pot didn’t get sweeter. It got more lawyerly. 
The votes from Tuesday’s midterm election are barely counted, and Big Green is already spiking the football. Democrats won control of both the U.S. House and Senate, plus a pile of governorships and state legislatures, including a full trifecta in Pennsylvania. Now the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), Climate Power, EDF Action and a long list of smaller groups are lining up to take credit and to tell the winners what they expect in return. MDN went looking for what they’ve said publicly. The common thread? Hardly a peep about “climate change.” It’s all electricity bills, Big Oil, and, here’s the part that should worry our readers, data centers. 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Why the new “king of shale gas” says AI will make all Americans more prosperous; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Democrat wins Texas oil regulator seat; U.S. propane’s surplus is gone, and the Midwest is running short; Mitsubishi Power bets $490M on gas turbine boom as orders surge; Bay Area officials move ahead with natural gas water heater ban; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas futures rise for second session; Take heart and fight, fight, fight – the real battle is in our classrooms and our homes; Democrats run both chambers now – the price of a barrel still runs itself; US LNG feedgas demand holds October pace despite Freeport train 2 outage; Gas vs. wind & solar – the power density gap advocates ignore; America can’t achieve energy dominance without freight rail; INTERNATIONAL: Oil plunges as election shifts Iran outlook; UAE mulls 3rd crude oil pipeline to avoid Hormuz; Butane’s perfect storm sends prices to decade highs. 
It happened, or very nearly so. For the first time in more than three decades, Democrats have claimed control of the Pennsylvania state Senate, with one race left for the Associated Press to make it official. Add a bigger Democratic majority in the state House, and Gov. Josh Shapiro’s landslide reelection, and Democrats now hold a “trifecta” in Harrisburg: all three levers of state government. Since Democrats took the House in 2022, the GOP-controlled Senate has been the Marcellus industry’s firewall against bad energy policy. On Jan. 5, 2027, that firewall goes away. Here’s what we know so far, and what we think it means for drillers, landowners, pipeliners, and everyone else who profits from PA shale. 
The word we’re seeing most this morning is “bloodbath,” and it fits. Democrats flipped both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate in yesterday’s midterm elections, only the fifth time since World War II that a party has flipped both chambers in a midterm. President Trump keeps his veto pen for two more years, so the fossil-friendly policies coming out of his agencies aren’t going anywhere soon. But the shale and LNG industries just lost a lot of friends on Capitol Hill, and maybe their best shot at federal permitting reform in a generation. Here’s what happened, why, and what it means for drillers, pipeliners, LNG exporters, and the landowners who depend on them. 
Yesterday, Ohio voters had their first big chance to vote directly on data centers, and the data centers got clobbered. There were 21 data center ballot measures in 18 Ohio towns, villages, and townships (more than half of the 41 on ballots across the country). Voters in at least 14 of those places passed bans or new restrictions, most of them by margins of roughly 3-to-1 or 4-to-1. For MDN readers, the biggest single loss came in tiny Ashville (Pickaway County, just south of Columbus). There, about 82% of voters struck down the village’s deal with EdgeConneX for two data centers and an on-site gas-fired power plant of up to 800 megawatts (MW). Below are the scorecard, the gas angle, who’s behind the bans, and what comes next. 
MPLX, the Marathon Petroleum offshoot that bought Utica pioneer MarkWest Energy in 2015, released its third-quarter 2026 results yesterday, and the Marcellus/Utica (M-U) numbers look very good. Marcellus gathering volumes rose 21% from a year ago, and Utica gathering volumes rose 19%. In August, MPLX started up its new Harmon Creek III gas processing plant in Washington County, PA, which added 300 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of capacity (see 
Williams, the Tulsa company that owns the Transco pipeline (the biggest artery carrying Marcellus/Utica gas to the East Coast), turned in a record third quarter on Monday. But the most important thing for MDN readers came on Tuesday’s earnings call: management admitted that the Third Circuit’s decision to toss New Jersey’s water permit for the Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) project “could put at risk our ability to get it online in time for next winter”. Meanwhile, the Southeast side of Transco keeps growing, a new Leidy Line expansion is at FERC, four Williams gas-fired power plants for data centers are rising in Ohio, and Constitution Pipeline? Not one word. 
Energy Transfer (ET), the Dallas-based pipeline giant behind the Rover Pipeline and the Mariner East system, reported its third-quarter 2026 results yesterday. The top-line numbers were big: adjusted EBITDA of $5.03 billion, up 31% from $3.84 billion a year ago. But for the MDN audience, the real story is in the details. ET has started a new 15-year, 250,000 MMBtu/d deal on Rover with an unnamed Marcellus driller. One customer on ET’s newly approved South Mississippi Pipeline has signed up for long-term capacity to move Marcellus/Utica gas south starting in 2029. And ET says the ethane export expansion at its Marcus Hook terminal near Philadelphia is on schedule for the second half of 2027, with roughly 75% of the new capacity already spoken for. Plus, co-CEO Marshall “Mackie” McCrea said goodbye on the call and had some choice words for pipeline saboteurs. 
A new study by the Fiscal Alliance Foundation, a free-market think tank in Massachusetts, says the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) could add about $1.49 billion to New England’s wholesale electricity costs this year. Here’s the eye-opener: at today’s prices, the RGGI carbon charge adds more to the cost of making electricity at a gas-fired power plant than the natural gas does. And it’s about to get worse. Starting in 2027, the RGGI cap shrinks by 73% in six years. Pennsylvania got out just in time. 
A Lycoming County sportsmen’s club that has been around since 1936 just lost its federal tax-exempt status, and the reason is its Marcellus royalty checks. On Oct. 29, the U.S. Tax Court sided with the IRS, ruling that gas royalties made up so much of the club’s income that it no longer qualified as a tax-exempt “social club.” A lot of MDN readers run, or sit on the boards of, nonprofits that collect signing bonuses and royalty checks: churches, fire companies, land trusts, granges, hunting camps. So we read the full 20-page decision and looked into how the rules work for other types of nonprofits. Our conclusion: hunting and social clubs are most at risk, but every nonprofit with a lease should sit down with its tax attorney soon. 
A Roane County, WV, man who spent 12 years driving a truck hauling crude oil and brine has sued 15 energy companies, claiming that on-the-job exposure to benzene and “radioactive fracking brine” gave him a rare bone marrow cancer. The defendant list includes some of the biggest names in the Marcellus/Utica: Antero, EQT, Coterra, Expand Energy (formerly Chesapeake), and Shell. 
More Marcellus wells are on the way in Pine Creek country. On October 20, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued EQT ARO LLC a permit to build about 4.6 miles of 10-inch gas line through Cummings and Watson townships in western Lycoming County, starting at a well pad on a state forest tract. DEP’s notice in last Saturday’s Pennsylvania Bulletin says the line is “for the purpose of Marcellus Shale well development.” The same issue shows Pennsylvania General Energy (PGE) picking up a new earthmoving permit one township over. Pine Creek is open for business. 
Dominion Energy, Virginia’s biggest electric utility, reported third-quarter results on Friday. On the earnings call, CEO Bob Blue talked up offshore wind, solar, and batteries. He said almost nothing about natural gas. The gas news is in the fine print instead. Dominion’s new long-range plan, filed with Virginia regulators on Oct. 15, calls for nearly 9 gigawatts (GW) of new gas-fired power plants. That’s more than the company’s entire Virginia gas fleet today! Dominion is also pushing ahead with gas plants in Chesterfield County, VA, and South Carolina. Meanwhile, the planned $67 billion merger with NextEra Energy faces its make-or-break Virginia hearing, which starts Nov. 17.