Ridgeline Nears Startup; Court Shreds Ruling Against TVA Gas Plant
One year ago today, we told you construction had started on Enbridge’s 122-mile Ridgeline Expansion Project in Tennessee (see Construction Begins on 122-Mile East Tennessee Pipeline Project). Now the pipe is just about ready to flow. Natural Gas Intelligence (NGI) reports that East Tennessee Natural Gas, an Enbridge company, could place Ridgeline into service as early as Nov. 1, delivering 300,000 dekatherms per day (Dth/d, roughly 300 MMcf/d, or million cubic feet per day) to the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) Kingston site. NGI mentions the other big news only in passing, so we’ll give it the spotlight: last Friday, a federal appeals court let construction continue on the $2.5 billion gas plant this pipeline feeds, and took apart, piece by piece, the reasoning of the judge whose ruling threatened to stop it. Read More “Ridgeline Nears Startup; Court Shreds Ruling Against TVA Gas Plant”
The Upper Burrell Township (Westmoreland County, PA) Planning Commission voted 5-0 Tuesday night to recommend the township’s data center ordinance, handing it to the three township supervisors. The supervisors hold a public hearing at 6 p.m. tonight (Oct. 22), followed by a special meeting to consider adopting it. They’re racing the clock: the township’s data center moratorium expires Nov. 2, just 11 days from now. Last month we told you the draft quietly requires every new data center to make its own around-the-clock (“baseload”) power, which in southwest Pennsylvania means natural gas. As best we can tell, that requirement survived. 
DNV, the Norway-based testing, certification, and risk management company, recently released its 10th annual Energy Transition Outlook (ETO). MDN has written about these outlooks before, and they usually read like a slow-motion obituary for fossil fuels. Not so much this year, at least for natural gas. DNV raised its long-term forecast for global gas demand, flipped its forecast for North American gas production from decline to growth, and says the U.S. and Canada are now the world’s biggest gas exporters, “the first time in the modern LNG era.” DNV still predicts gas will lose most of its role in power generation by mid-century, which we take issue with below. 
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Natural gas turbines at Sterling data center could power down in 2028; D.C. and Commanders rule out power plant, but confirm natural gas use for new stadium; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas futures fall on mild near-term weather outlook; Natural gas price forecast – channel breakdown signals deeper decline; Those who oppose data centers will someday regret their short-sighted choices; INTERNATIONAL: Oil gains after Saudi oil field attack; Macron says France to get LNG supplies from Qatar in winter. 
On Monday, the Pennsylvania Democrat-controlled House took a tax bill the Senate sent over in June, gutted it, and sent back something very different. The new version has a 2-cent-per-kilowatt-hour fee on big electricity users (read: data centers), a grab bag of “clean energy” tax credits from Gov. Shapiro’s wish list, and a gas-fired power plant credit so wrapped in strings it may never pay out a dime. The House vote was 193-10. The Republican-controlled Senate had two voting days on the calendar before the Nov. 3 election: yesterday and today. The Republican-controlled Senate left the bill in its Rules Committee on Tuesday and instead passed 17 other measures. Today is its last scheduled day of voting before the Nov. 3 election. We don’t see any signs they will take up this bill today, but one never knows. 
Here’s a head-scratcher for you. On Tuesday, the price of natural gas futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) took a tumble, slipping below $3 for the first time in more than two weeks. Yet on that very same day, the “spot” (cash) price for gas right here in Appalachia went UP—and one trading point jumped more than 20% in a single day. How does that happen? And should drillers and royalty owners break out the champagne? Let’s unpack it. 
The folks who count frac crews for a living say U.S. fracking should bounce back by next spring. The biggest frac company in the country is more cautious: Halliburton says it’s planning for a flat 2027 in North America, and any frac recovery is “purely upside.” So who’s right? Maybe both. And tucked inside the numbers is some very good news for the Marcellus/Utica. 
Halliburton, one of the two or three biggest frac providers working in the Marcellus/Utica, reported its third-quarter 2026 results yesterday. Most of the financial press focused on Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and a rosy 2027 forecast. The part M-U drillers (and the folks who supply them) should care about came out during the earnings call. Frac crews are getting scarce, customers are lining up for next year, and Halliburton is raising its prices. If you drill wells in Appalachia, your 2027 completion budget may need a bigger number in it. 
JKLM Energy, the private drilling company run by Buffalo Bills and Sabres owner Terry Pegula, has applied to drill a shale well in Salem Township, Westmoreland County, PA, next to the Totteridge Golf Course. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review’s story on the permit says the well would tap a “1,000-acre pool of methane.” Um, no. There is no underground lake of gas sitting beneath Salem and Hempfield townships, waiting for someone to stick a straw in it. What JKLM has put together is a pooled drilling unit. That’s a legal arrangement, not a geological feature. The difference matters a great deal to the 64 landowners who will someday be cashing royalty checks from this well. 
Ohio’s state-land leasing program has a new target. A driller (whose name is kept secret by state law, for now) has asked the Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management Commission (OGLMC) to open about 618 acres under the Monroe Lake Wildlife Area in Monroe County to shale drilling. Public comments are open through Nov. 30. The twist this time? Because of the calendar, the final call may land on the desk of whoever wins next month’s race for governor. 
Back on Sept. 1, we told you Dominion Energy’s monster 3,000-megawatt (3 gigawatt) gas-fired power plant in Cumberland County, Virginia, had cleared its first hurdle when the county planning commission voted 5-1 to recommend approval (see 
The Trump administration just put real money where its mouth is on the Constitution Pipeline. Yesterday the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced it will spend up to $42 million in Defense Production Act (DPA) money to nudge Williams’ long-dead, now-revived 125-mile pipeline from Susquehanna County, PA to Schoharie County, NY closer to reality. The money won’t buy a single length of pipe—it pays for permitting and pre-construction work. And it doesn’t change the fact that New York and its Big Green allies are still fighting the project tooth and nail. But it sends a loud message: Washington now officially considers Constitution a national security asset. 
It’s official, or at least as official as these things get. America’s LNG export plants are drinking more natural gas than ever before. Two separate data trackers now say feedgas, the gas piped into LNG plants to be supercooled into a liquid and loaded onto ships, has set a new all-time high above 20 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day). NGI clocked 20.7 Bcf/d on Monday, the third straight day above its prior record. RBN Energy says feedgas has topped 20 Bcf/d for the first time ever. The milestone comes almost exactly a decade after the first LNG cargo left Cheniere’s Sabine Pass terminal in 2016. It also arrived just as a big chunk of Marcellus gas came back online after a leak on TC Energy’s Mountaineer XPress (MXP) pipeline in West Virginia.