MDN’s Energy Stories of Interest: Thu, Jul 10, 2025 [FREE ACCESS]
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: FERC issues notice to proceed with construction at Mississippi Hub; NATIONAL: Chevron preps quick closing of Hess deal and awaits result of Exxon dispute; Executives reveal where they see Henry Hub price landing in future; How rising renewable output complicates natural gas trading; Natural gas is green and hugely beneficial economically; Trump says wind and solar are ‘a blight on our country’; INTERNATIONAL: Oil holds gains despite US crude surge; Oil giant Saudi Aramco in talks with Commonwealth LNG for offtake agreement. Read More “MDN’s Energy Stories of Interest: Thu, Jul 10, 2025 [FREE ACCESS]”
Chesapeake Utilities Corporation, not to be confused with the former Chesapeake Energy Corporation (which is now Expand Energy), announced that its Ohio subsidiary, Aspire Energy Express, LLC, has entered into an agreement with American Electric Power (AEP) to construct and operate an intrastate natural gas pipeline in central Ohio to feed Marcellus/Utica gas to a new fuel-cell facility, which will provide on-site electric power to a data center. The pipeline is expected to cost approximately $10 million to construct. 
Gas-fired power plants, both brand new and existing plants, are hot properties these days. We’ve covered several recent sales of existing gas-fired power plants in the Marcellus/Utica region (and beyond). Here’s another one: investment firm Strategic Value Partners, LLC (SVP) announced yesterday that it’s acquiring Red Oak Power, an 831-megawatt natural gas-fired combined-cycle generation facility located in Sayreville, New Jersey. 
A month ago, MDN published a post predicting that Marcellus/Utica natural gas production is set to grow thanks to new pipeline projects and demand from data centers and LNG exporters (see 
In what appears to be an innocuous, brief press release, DT Midstream (DTM), headquartered in Detroit, which owns significant assets in the Marcellus/Utica region and other regions, including the Haynesville, delivered what we consider big news. DTM has achieved an investment-grade rating with all three major credit rating agencies: Fitch Ratings, Moody’s Ratings, and S&P Global Ratings. While this announcement may seem minor, we can assure you, it’s a big deal. 
Anyone with half a brain in the energy space has seen and predicted (for years) a coming imbalance between electricity generation and electricity demand here in the U.S. When you don’t have enough production (generation) for increasing demand, there is a temporary cushion in the way of “peaker” plants that come online to bridge the gap. However, when huge new demand suddenly emerges, such as for AI data centers, and that demand is ongoing, peakers can’t meet the demand. The result is a power outage. The policies of Lord Obama and President Autopen, in promoting wind and solar while throttling natural gas, have set us up for a disaster, with an inability to meet sudden new demand for electricity. Unreliable renewables are NOT up to the task. That is the conclusion of a new report issued by the Department of Energy (DOE) called “Report on Evaluating U.S. Grid Reliability and Security” (full copy below). 
On Monday, President Trump signed an Executive Order (EO) to end market-distorting subsidies for unreliable wind and solar. The EO directs the Secretary of the Treasury (Scott Bessent) to terminate the clean electricity production and investment tax credits for wind and solar facilities and implement the enhanced Foreign Entity of Concern restrictions as identified in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The EO also directs the Secretary of the Interior (Doug Burgum) to revise regulations and policies to eliminate preferential treatment for wind and solar facilities compared to reliable, dispatchable energy sources. 
In early April, MDN brought you the exciting news that THE largest gas-fired power plant in the country, along with a MASSIVE data center complex, will be built at a former coal-fired power plant site in Indiana County, PA (see 
The lawfare battle brought by radical green groups in New Jersey, including Food and Water Watch, the NJ Highlands Coalition, and the Sierra Club, aimed at overturning the decision to permit and build an electric compressor station and a pipeline that connects to it, is over. Done. Finished. Can we please stick a fork in it? We’re talking about the battle to block a compressor project in West Milford, NJ, part of Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) East 300 expansion project, an upgrade of TGP to deliver an extra 115 MMcf/d of natural gas to Consolidated Edison and its customers in New York City and surrounding suburbs. The radicals just flamed out in a NJ appeals court and have no options left to challenge it. 
When referring to Big Green groups in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, we often label the groups as “colluding,” meaning they coordinate their legal and public relations attacks against fossil fuel companies. It is something we have long suspected but (unfortunately) can’t prove definitively. We had hoped Philadelphia Gas Works (PGW) was about to prove it (see 
MDN recently brought you the news that the Trump administration was blocking cargoes of ethane to China (see