Dominion Energy: Gas Is Winning, Renewables Are Getting Written Off
Dominion Energy reported second-quarter 2026 results on July 31, and while Wall Street focused on the penny-counting, there were three items in the release and on the analyst call that matter to Marcellus/Utica producers, midstreamers, and landowners: two new gas-fired power plants moving into permitting, a merger timeline that’s now locked in at the state level, and a nine-figure write-off on renewable assets that tells you which way the wind is actually blowing. Read More “Dominion Energy: Gas Is Winning, Renewables Are Getting Written Off”
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. 
Let’s be honest — corporate “sustainability reports” are usually 100+ pages of stock photography, buzzwords, and pie charts about employee engagement. We normally give them a wide berth. But Williams released its 2025 Sustainability Report on July 29, and this one is different. Underneath the ESG wrapping paper is a straight-up growth story, and a surprising amount of it runs directly through the Marcellus and Utica. If you’re a landowner in Licking County, a driller in the Utica dry gas window, or anyone who owns WMB shares, there’s real news here. 
Something of an upset last week for rigs operating in the Marcellus/Utica region. We maintained the same cumulative count of 36 last week, which has been at that level for 12 weeks in a row. However, Ohio lost one rig in the Utica (now operating 10 rigs), while West Virginia gained that lost rig in the Marcellus (now operating 9 rigs). Pennsylvania maintained its rig count of 17. The national count increased by 1 to 588, which ties with a few weeks ago to be the highest national rig count in more than a year. 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: PA farmers group seeks data center halt, cites eminent domain; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Atlas Energy taps Kodiak for driverless oilfield trucking; Judge casts doubt on New York’s polluter pays climate law; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas futures settle modestly lower; Anti-data-center hysteria echoes decades of failed green predictions; INTERNATIONAL: Brent caps strongest month since March; LNG tanker carrying Qatari cargo struck in Strait of Hormuz. 
The Marcellus/Utica region received 19 new drilling permits last week, July 20 – 26, down 7 from two weeks ago. Last week, Pennsylvania issued 10 new permits. Ohio issued 4 new permits. And West Virginia issued 5 new permits. The drillers who received new permits included: Ascent Resources (1), EOG Resources (1), EQT (7), Expand Energy (5), Infinity Natural Resources (2), Range Resources (2), and Snyder Brothers (1). 
Antero Resources, the biggest driller in West Virginia and roughly 11% of all Appalachian production, dropped its second quarter 2026 numbers on July 29 and held its analyst call the next morning. Three things jumped off the page: a record quarter, a dry gas well result that borders on spectacular, and a rare public admission that Antero turned down a power deal in its own backyard because the money wasn’t good enough. 
Antero Midstream Corporation (AM) posted second quarter 2026 results on Tuesday and held its analyst call yesterday morning. A quick word on the corporate plumbing for newer readers: Antero Midstream and Antero Resources (AR) are two separate publicly traded companies that share a management team. AR drills the wells; AM gathers, compresses and moves the gas and handles the water. Different shareholders, same brain trust. The headline number is a good one. AM gathered 4.1 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day) during the quarter, a 19% jump year over year and a company record. Compression volumes rose 17%. Most of that growth came from the HG Midstream assets AM bought earlier this year and has now fully digested. Processing and fractionation capacity at AM’s joint venture ran at 100% utilization — you can’t do better than full. 
National Fuel Gas Company (NFG) — the Williamsville, NY company that drills (Seneca Resources), pipes (NFG Supply Corporation, Empire), and sells gas at the meter (NFG Distribution Corp) — issued its fiscal third quarter update Wednesday evening and talked it over with analysts Thursday morning. NFG’s fiscal year ends September 30, so their “third quarter” is everyone else’s second quarter (April–June). There’s a lot in here for Marcellus/Utica watchers, but two items stand out: Supply Corporation more than tripled the size of its Line N System Upgrade Project, and Seneca is about to start writing big checks to landowners in Tioga County. 
Detroit-based DT Midstream (DTM) reported second quarter 2026 results this week, and while the headline numbers were fine but unremarkable, the Appalachian news buried in the deck is worth your attention. DTM booked net income of $112 million ($1.09 per diluted share) and adjusted EBITDA of $305 million, declared a $0.88 per share dividend, and reaffirmed full-year 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance of $1.155–$1.225 billion. Fine. Now here’s the part that matters if you own minerals in Belmont County or run a rig crew in Susquehanna County: DTM just signed up a new 380 MMcf/d interconnect on the NEXUS Gas Transmission pipeline that will feed a gas-fired power plant serving a new data center in Ohio — and it’s expanding its Appalachia Gathering System by 100 MMcf/d to shove more supply into NEXUS and Texas Eastern. 
I&S Inc. of New York, an Allegany-based well servicing company owned by Dan Sessler, is planning a $9 million expansion that will create at least 80 new jobs. The company, which has serviced oil, gas, and solution mining wells since 1988, is purchasing the old Allegany Drive-In property along Route 417 — just up the road from its current headquarters. Plans call for a new 5,000-square-foot office, a 14,400-square-foot commercial shop, and a 9,600-square-foot cold storage warehouse to store pipe for its oil, gas, and solution mining operations. The company secured a 10-year PILOT agreement from the Cattaraugus County IDA. Construction costs are estimated at $7.3 million. 
For the past two years we’ve heard the same complaint on repeat: those greedy data centers are jacking up your electric bill. State legislators have introduced data center construction bans. Towns have passed moratoriums. A Gallup poll found roughly 70% of Americans don’t want a data center anywhere near them. The White House even got seven big tech companies to sign a “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” this past March. Turns out the whole premise may be backward. A new working paper from researchers at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) — Asa Watten, John Bistline, and Geoffrey Blanford — looked at the actual data from 2015 through 2024 and found data centers caused average residential electricity rates to fall. Not rise. Fall. 
Expand Energy, the largest natural gas producer in the country, reported its second-quarter 2026 numbers on Tuesday and held its analyst call Wednesday morning. Headline items: net production of 7.48 Bcfe/d (billion cubic feet equivalent per day), net income of $522 million, and a reaffirmed full-year guide of 7.4–7.6 Bcfe/d on $2.75–$2.95 billion of capital spending. But the news that matters most to MDN readers isn’t in the headline — it’s buried in the slide deck. Expand quietly paid roughly $5,000 an acre for 3,000 acres in core Bradford County, Pennsylvania, and turned in the best drilling quarter in the history of its Southwest Appalachia business. Meanwhile, interim CEO Mike Wichterich says the search for a permanent boss is in “the back third” and will land inside the promised nine months. Let’s break it down. 
Yesterday we told you about Project Oak Leaf, Eastern Gas Transmission and Storage’s (EGTS) 52.5-mile expansion that will carry Leidy gas down to Maryland and Virginia (see 
We periodically go pipeline-notice hunting to see what’s throttling Marcellus/Utica molecules on any given day (see