Texas Energy Report NewsClips
Monday July 27, 2026
Asterisk (*) denotes news stories that may be inaccessible because portions are behind a paywall
Good morning! Here are today’s Texas Energy Report NewsClips
Oil prices fell Monday after Iran reportedly said it would suspend attacks as long as a U.S. pause in hostilities remains in place, easing concerns over nearly two weeks of escalating conflict.
West Texas Intermediate crude futures for September delivery similarly dropped over 5% to $84.84 a barrel.
International benchmark Brent crude futures for September delivery fell 4.88% to around $92 a barrel.
Iran has indicated it will stop carrying out attacks as long as the United States also refrains from striking, Reuters reported on Sunday, citing a senior Iranian official.
The pause follows Washington’s decision to suspend its bombing campaign after President Donald Trump’s advisers reportedly warned that the military was running out of viable targets and raised concerns about depleting U.S. weapons stockpiles.
Top Stories
Texas Monthly – July 24, 2026
If you’re wondering what, exactly, a century-old Russian coup has to do with the railroad commission, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry, then you’re likely not alone. But among a small audience—those attuned to white supremacist dog whistles—the accusation almost certainly perked up some ears. You see, Rosenthal is Jewish. And while French did not explicitly name the Bolshevik revolutionaries who overthrew Russia a century ago, the email appears to be nodding to an antisemitic conspiracy theory that claims there is a Jewish Communist cabal intent on controlling the world and stamping out Christianity. Known as Judeo-Bolshevism, the theory was crucial to Adolf Hitler’s rise and a key justification for the Holocaust. It remains central to the worldviews of many modern fascists, who maintain that communism—and, by extension, immigration—are tools used by Jews to destroy the West and white people.
In a statement to Texas Monthly, Rosenthal called French’s post “true to form.” The Texas House member from the Houston area and longtime mechanical engineer in the oil and gas industry continued: “While I’m working on substantive solutions for the people of Texas and our energy grid, his whole campaign is about pejorative and racist attacks.” Neither French nor his campaign responded this week to numerous requests for an interview, or to clarify whether he intended to invoke the conspiracy theory. But his other recent posts make clear he has a deep familiarity with esoteric racist views that were once largely confined to fringe corners of the far right.
Bloomberg – July 24, 2026
Devon Said to Mull $4 Billion Exit From Eagle Ford, Powder River*
Devon Energy Corp. is exploring a sale of its Eagle Ford and Powder River shale assets as part of a streamlining of its portfolio, which together could fetch more than $4 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. Devon aims to announce a strategic review of the assets, located in South Texas and Wyoming, respectively, when it reports earnings in early August, one of the people said, asking not to be identified because the discussions are private. No final decision has been made, the timing could change or Devon could opt to hold onto the assets, the people added.
A representative for Devon didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. US shale operators have been selling assets to pay down debt following a consolidation wave totaling more than $450 billion in deals since the start of 2023. Devon has been pushed by investors to sell assets and focus on its largest business in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico following its $25 billion acquisition of Coterra Energy Inc., which was announced in February. “Acquiring Coterra further diversifies a fairly diffuse asset base,” Vince Piazza, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, wrote in a July 20 report. “Though Permian concentration will grow, asset sales will likely be needed.”
Kimmeridge Energy Management Co., an outspoken shale investor, criticized Devon’s divestment program this month as too slow. Toms Capital Investment Management, a top-five shareholder in the stock, is considering all options to spur action at Devon, Bloomberg News reported this month. Last month, Devon Chief Executive Officer Clay Gaspar told investors in New York that the company is moving with haste to evaluate its portfolio, calling it a months-long rather than a years-long exercise.
Politico – July 24, 2026
Trump’s oil woes are even worse than they look
President Donald Trump’s gasoline price problems are going from bad to worse. It’s not just the Strait of Hormuz, where hostilities have resumed after Trump declared the shaky ceasefire “OVER!” Oil tankers now face attacks along two other major shipping routes, my colleague James Bikales reports today, as Iranian-allied Houthis choked traffic through the Red Sea and Ukraine’s attacks on Russia’s oil industry have throttled supplies coming through the Black Sea.
That triple threat to oil supplies comes as the world has almost exhausted the tactics that kept fuel prices lower than expected at the start of the war. Global fuel inventories, flush in February, are now approaching critical lows. The U.S. has also reached the limit of its refining capacity, using up the slack that had helped keep domestic prices lower than many other countries. “A very large part of the world’s oil supply is surrounded by war,” John Evans, analyst at PVM Oil Associates, said in a client note Thursday. “With cures such as further, higher U.S. production and [Strategic Petroleum Reserve] releases hard to fathom, and with other remedies already played out, this current march higher in crude prices is not only understandable but required.”
CNBC – July 25, 2026
Blackstone, Brookfield and KKR sign $16 billion deal with Kuwait for oil pipeline network
Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) has signed a $16 billion deal to lease and lease back its crude oil pipeline network with a consortium comprising global funds Blackstone, Brookfield Asset Management and KKR, the state-owned Gulf firm said on Saturday. It said it was the largest foreign direct investment in the country’s history. Under the investment called Project Peregrine, KPC’s unit Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) is establishing a joint venture with the three global investors in a lease-and-leaseback structure for a 20.5-year period that includes a volume-based tariff, KPC said in a statement.
“This transaction sends a powerful signal that Kuwait continues to rise as an attractive destination for global capital, even amid a challenging regional environment,” KPC Deputy Chairman and CEO Shaikh Nawaf Saud Al-Sabah said in the statement. The process for the stake sale was launched just before joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28, Reuters previously reported, citing sources.
Associated Press – July 25, 2026
Trump administration admits grants for clean energy were canceled based on politics
The Trump administration has acknowledged in court documents that it canceled $7.6 billion in grants for hundreds of clean energy projects “based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state” — in this case, 16 states that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. The statement contradicts repeated assertions by Energy Secretary Chris Wright and other officials that the projects were canceled because they did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs or had other problems that made them a poor investment of taxpayer dollars.
Democrats and environmental groups seized on the court filing Friday, saying the administration had “weaponized” the federal government to kill good jobs and punish working families because of their political views. “This administration has now admitted in court what has long been obvious: it terminated nearly 300 cost-cutting energy projects for no reason other than the fact that the states they were in did not vote for the president in the 2024 election,” said Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state. Both are high-ranking Democrats on the House and Senate Appropriations committees, respectively.
The Latest TERse Tips
A Ukrainian drone strike sparked a fire at the Tyumen refinery in western Siberia, but the blaze was later extinguished, local Russian authorities said on Saturday — Reuters*
Peter Lake, a key architect of President Donald Trump’s effort to to grow electricity production for artificial intelligence, is leaving his position at the White House’s National Energy Dominance Council at the end of this month — Lake, a former chair of the Public Utility Commission of Texas, served as senior director of power for the NEDC, where he helped drive the White House proposals designed to enable data centers to quickly connect to the power grid while establishing measures to help protect ratepayers from additional costs — Politico
Floodwater starts arriving in Corpus Christi reservoirs, sparking hope for a water crisis delay — Choke Canyon has almost doubled its supply of water this week, although the reservoir is still at 15% capacity — Texas Tribune
SLB, the world’s biggest oil field services provider, rose the most in more than six months after the company said it expects constructive oil and gas investment in 2027 driven by supply disruptions from the conflict in the Middle East — Bloomberg*
Kinder Morgan’s expanded Gulf Coast Express pipeline was full soon after it entered service, executives said Wednesday, easing a Permian Basin natural gas glut and strengthening the case for the company’s next wave of takeaway projects — Natural Gas Intelligence*
Last Wednesday, a conglomeration of local, state and federal leaders came together in Texarkana at the first State of Lithium Symposium for the region to examine the future of lithium mining in Texas — the U.S. depends primarily on foreign nations, such as China and Chile, to supply its lithium, which is used in everything from electric vehicle batteries to smartphones — the Smackover Formation, a deep well of salty water stretching from Texas to Florida, has a large store of lithium that has been known about for decades. However, only recently has technology evolved to extract it safely — Texas Tribune
Podcast: Who Will Lead Texas’ Oil & Gas Industry? | Y’all-itics (40 min.) — KHOU
Oil & Gas Texas
Oil Price – July 24, 2026
US Oil Drillers Take A Break As Oil Prices Hover Near $100
The total number of active drilling rigs for oil and gas in the United States fell this week, according to new data that Baker Hughes published on Friday, bringing the total rig count in the US to 587, up 45 from this same time last year. The number of active oil rigs fell by 2, reaching 450 during the latest reporting period, according to the data. This is 35 above this same time last year. The number of gas rigs rose by 1 and now stand at 127, which is 5 more than this time last year. Miscellaneous rigs stayed at 10.
The latest EIA data showed that weekly U.S. crude oil production fell slightly during week ending July 17. US crude oil production averaged 13.798 million bpd during the reporting period, down from 13.861 million bpd last week and up 525,000 bpd from a year ago. Primary Vision’s Frac Spread Count, an estimate of the number of crews completing wells, fell by 4 in the week ending July 17, to 196 crews, after losing 5 in the week prior. The number of active drilling rigs in the Permian Basin fell by 1 in the reporting period, sinking to 258. This is 2 rigs under year-ago levels. The count in the Eagle Ford stayed the same again this week at 47, which is 8 more than this same time last year.
Oil & Gas Journal – July 24, 2026
Poll results: Risks to natural gas pipeline construction
Midstream operators and their upstream customers are counting on a wave of new natural gas pipeline capacity to reach markets. Projects like Energy Transfer’s Hugh Brinson and WhiteWater’s Blackcomb pipeline are expected to add more than 5 bcfd of Permian takeaway capacity alone by late 2026, and the broader build-out extends well beyond West Texas. But pipeline construction costs have hit record levels, FERC’s permitting reforms are still working their way through the system, and capital markets remain watchful. History says not every project that gets announced gets built on time, or at all.
A total of 40% of respondents said permitting delays, even with FERC streamlining under way, was the biggest risk to project completion over the next 24 months.
A smaller percentage (27%) said potential crude oil price drop reducing associated gas volumes was the largest risk.
Not far behind was the risk associated with the price of materials. Of those that took the survey, 20% said steel and material cost inflation eroding project economics was the largest risk to project completion.
Thirteen percent of respondents said tightening of finance terms would be the biggest risk.
Participants were evenly split between the financial services/capital providers category and those in consulting roles.
Reuters – July 24, 2026
Argent LNG wins US approval for exports to nations with free-trade agreements*
The U.S. Department of Energy has authorized Argent LNG to export liquefied natural gas from its proposed Louisiana export terminal to countries that have free-trade agreements with the U.S., giving the developer a key federal approval as it works toward a final investment decision on the project. Argent LNG is a privately held U.S. company developing an LNG export terminal at Port Fourchon, Louisiana, about 100 miles (160 km) south of New Orleans. The project is designed to export up to 25 million metric tons per year of LNG, which would make it one of the larger proposed LNG facilities on the U.S. Gulf Coast.
The DOE said Argent LNG may export up to the equivalent of 1.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas per year for a 20-year term beginning on the date of the facility’s first commercial export, from its planned project. The authorization, granted on Thursday, also allows the company to export any unused volumes during a three-year make-up period following the end of the export term.
The Wall Street Journal – July 24, 2026
Chevron Is Trying to Keep Its Kazakh Assets Out of the Russia-Ukraine War*
Chevron Chief Executive Mike Wirth spoke with Trump administration officials earlier this week about a pressing matter: how to keep the U.S. oil giant’s massive operations in Kazakhstan from becoming collateral damage in the Ukraine-Russia war. A recent Ukrainian drone attack hit four tankers, including one chartered by Chevron, in the Black Sea near Novorossiysk. The Russian port is a key oil export hub and the termination point for a pipeline, partly owned by Chevron, that feeds 2% of the world’s daily oil supplies. Crude loadings have since been restricted at the pipeline, forcing Kazakhstan to curb oil production because it has limited storage capacity. Chevron has a lot at stake in the region. Wirth, his lieutenants and other oil-industry leaders engaged with senior U.S. officials this week to discuss oil markets and the situation in the Black Sea to try to protect their interests there, according to people familiar with the matter.
Following discussions with the industry, the Trump administration warned Ukraine against attacking non-Russian vessels in the Black Sea, a U.S. official said. “The administration views the CPC as a vital conduit of Kazakhstan-origin energy for European markets that serves as an alternative to Russian energy supplies,” the official said. Chevron owns a 15% share in the pipeline—the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, or CPC—which carries crude from three giant oil-and-gas fields across the mountainous terrain of Kazakhstan into Russia and out to the Black Sea.
More importantly, the company has a 50% stake in the most productive of those fields, the Tengiz, which is responsible for about 12% of its global production. Chevron has spent tens of billions of dollars to expand its operations there in recent years. The pipeline and oil fields themselves are undamaged, but a prolonged cut to production would jeopardize the company’s substantial cash flow from the region. The Trump administration is keen to keep Chevron’s oil flowing after the recent closures of two key oil chokepoints in the Middle East briefly sent global crude prices sailing above $100 a barrel this week.
Midland Reporter-Telegram – July 25, 2026
Superior expands with Sonic Holdings acquisition*
Superior Energy Services is expanding its focus from drilling and completions to production with the acquisition of Sonic Holdings. “This is a different revenue stream for us,” Josh Shapiro, chief financial officer at Superior, said in a phone interview. Before the Sonic acquisition, he said, Superior’s revenue came from drilling and completion capital expenditures, with some revenue from ongoing production expenditures. Production was a market segment the company wanted to grow, Shapiro said.
The rig count may ebb and flow with commodity prices, but operators are keen to continue production from their existing wells, he said. “We’re gaining more exposure to ongoing production,” he said. Both companies have a presence in the Permian Basin, he said. Sonic is a provider of proprietary electric feedthrough technologies, production equipment, drilling wellheads and associated aftermarket services.
San Antonio Express-News – July 26, 2026
Industrial gas company to build $5.4M facility on San Antonio’s West Side*
The world’s fourth-largest supplier of industrial, electronic and medical gases is building a new outpost in San Antonio. Irving-based Nippon Sanso Matheson plans to build a $5.4 million office and production facility on the West Side, according to a filing with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. Construction on the 18,923-square-foot building, located at 6430 Texas 151, is expected to begin in August and be completed by the same time next year. Details in state filings are preliminary and subject to change without notice.
Nippon Sanso Matheson already has a facility at 3566 N. Pan Am Expressway on the East Side. It’s unclear whether the company plans to move operations to its new facility. The company did not respond to a request for comment ahead of publication. The company manufactures and supplies industrial gases, high-purity specialty gases and advanced gas-handling equipment, serving key industries such as electronics, healthcare, welding and refining, through bulk delivery, cylinder supply and on-site gas generation systems. It has more than 300 locations in the U.S. and more than 4,500 employees, according to its website. Its parent company, Tokyo-based Nippon Sanso Holdings Corp., reported a $159 million increase in net profit to $783 million for the fiscal year that ended March 31.
Oil & Gas National & International
Associated Press – July 23, 2026
Middle East oil producers step up plans to bypass the Strait of Hormuz
Before the war in Iran, roughly 15 million barrels of Persian Gulf oil were shipped each day through the Strait of Hormuz. Within a few years, much of that oil could bypass the strait. As Iran’s chokehold over the strait drags on and oil prices surge, countries across the Gulf are planning to spend billions of dollars to build pipelines enabling them to redirect more supplies to ports on the Red Sea, the Gulf of Oman and the Mediterranean.
At least seven major pipeline projects are under construction, in the planning stage or being discussed as possibilities, according to government officials, oil companies and analysts. The war has been a wake-up call for Gulf oil producers, who are determined to become less dependent on a transit point that hugs Iran’s coast. But alternatives to Hormuz are also vulnerable to disruption. Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels said early Thursday they had attacked two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, a key alternative route to the strait for Saudi oil exports.
Bloomberg – July 25, 2026
Saudi Oil Can Still Get Out — But It Won’t Be Cheap or Easy: Javier Blas*
Early on in the Iran war, a long-forgotten pipeline built across Saudi Arabia 40 years ago became a lifesaver for the global economy. The East-West conduit allowed the kingdom to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, keeping some of its oil flowing1. Now that the Houthis of Yemen are trying to close an essential chokepoint for that workaround, the Saudis may need a bypass for the bypass. Engineering a new detour that avoids the Bab el-Mandeb strait on the southern end of the Red Sea would be a tall task. It would require the use of one, perhaps two, extra pipelines, quite a lot of oil tankers and a good dosage of Middle Eastern cloak-and-dagger diplomacy to keep everything running despite the threat of missiles and drones. It won’t be easy — or cheap.
But it is possible. The good news is that the Saudis, who now export most of their oil from the Red Sea via the East-West bypass pipeline rather than through the Persian Gulf, have a natural way to avoid the strait. Rather than sending the oil south toward the chokepoint, the kingdom can push the barrels north. The bad news is that’s not a simple as it sounds. Worse, arranging the new bypass is urgent: The Houthis made good on their threat to close the strait earlier this week, attacking two Saudi-flagged oil tankers in the southern Red Sea. Going north means taking the Suez Canal to reach the Mediterranean Sea, and from there, the high seas. Putting aside the fact this route means Asia-bound ships emerge on the wrong side of the map, there’s still the problem of depth: The waterway is only an option for medium-sized oil tankers. The largest ones, uncreatively known as Very Large Crude Carriers, or VLCCs, and able to carry two million barrels, cannot sail the canal fully laden. That’s an issue because the VLCCs are the workhorse of the oil industry, carrying most of the Saudi crude. The only solution is to lighten the supertankers, so their draft is reduced.
Oil Price – July 25, 2026
The Carbon Capture Boom Is Starting to Crack
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology grew in popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic as several governments and private companies pledged to support a green transition. The use of CCS was expected to help decarbonise hard-to-abate industries until a long-term transition to clean energy could be achieved. However, in recent years, many have become more sceptical about the effectiveness of CCS technologies, as several projects have failed to perform.
CCS technology is used to capture carbon dioxide at emission sources, so it can be transported and stored or buried in a suitable underground location. Several CCS technologies have been launched in recent years, including conventional CCS installations and direct air capture (DAC) – which removes CO2 directly from the atmosphere – as they have grown in popularity, particularly across hard-to-abate industries.
Utilities, Electricity & Renewables
Houston Chronicle – July 25, 2026
From real estate listing to city resolution: Jacinto City’s AI data center fight*
What began as an industrial real estate listing quickly sent Jacinto City leaders into overdrive, with phones ringing off the hook and City Council chambers filling with concerned residents. Chron’s reporting in May revealed that a brokerage firm was advertising an old glass bottle factory as a potential data center location. If the sale had happened, it could have been one of the largest data centers in the surrounding Houston area.
In a matter of weeks, concern over a potential AI data center went from online discussions threads to an official city resolution expressing opposition to data center development on July 2. “WHEREAS, the City Council finds that it is in the best interest of the citizens of Jacinto City to formally express opposition to the construction and development of data centers within the City limits until additional information and policy direction can be obtained and evaluated.” Texas has become an epicenter for AI data center development, drawing billions of dollars in investment and proposals for sprawling campuses across the state. But as the industry’s footprint grows, so has public skepticism.
KXAN – July 23, 2026
Austin’s power grid weathers unprecedented demand amid Texas heat wave
Jan Justice charged her Tesla after returning home Thursday evening. A resident of Austin’s Rosedale neighborhood, she retreated through her front door to escape lingering high temperatures. “They’re so hot,” noted Justice. Earlier — when thermometers reached triple digits — the resident sent home contractors working on her garage. She felt the heat posed a “threat to their humanity.” Inside her house, Justice relies on air conditioning to cool down.
“It’s hard to keep up with the outside heat,” she conceded. But that breezy relief requires power — potentially a record-breaking amount during a string of searing days. “We’re seeing those temperatures go up, and energy demand to go along with it,” noted Matt Mitchell. The Austin Energy public information officer said situations like this are nothing new.
July 24, 2026
A massive artificial-intelligence (AI) infrastructure project is rising approximately 12 miles northeast of Amarillo. Known as Project Matador, the development is being built by Fermi America through a partnership with the Texas Tech University System and promoted as the largest private energy and artificial-intelligence campus in the world.
The scale is staggering. Early plans described a roughly 6,000-acre campus capable of generating 11 gigawatts of electricity—enough to power the equivalent of approximately 8.2 million homes, by the company’s own estimate. Now the company says it will produce 17 gigawatts across 7,570 acres, with natural gas, solar energy, battery storage, and four proposed nuclear reactors providing the power. All of this infrastructure is intended principally to power AI.
Dallas Morning News – July 25, 2026
Welcome to Texas. Now meet our cockamamie electricity system: Dave Lieber, the Watchdog*
I keep thinking of a fictional family who moved here for, let’s say, a new job. They comprise just a few of the thousand newcomers who move to Texas every day. If I could, I’d sit the newcomers down and warn them that they are not only launching a new life in Texas, but they also are becoming enmeshed in one of the biggest scandals in state history. The cockamamie electricity system. It’s so messed up that you’ll be paying for past mistakes along with almost everyone else, even if you didn’t live here. The Watchdog prepared this primer for you. But as for everyone else, see how much you remember.
People think our most serious problems began with February 2021’s devastating winter storm. Most of us suffered with limited electricity during a four-day crisis. But actually the problems began much sooner. Enron, a Houston-based company grew into the largest energy company in the world. But its top executives played endless games with their financial books. The company used loopholes to hide bad debts. Enron also inflated its earnings.The company went bankrupt in 2001 and closed. Executives went to prison. The shutdown harmed thousands of investors. Losses were said to be $74 billion. Thousands of employees lost their jobs. Why is this included here? Enron pushed hard for deregulation. Even though the company failed, Texas leaders pushed the Enron model through when they launched deregulation.
Investment Engineering – July 25, 2026
American Fusion has officially cleared a major regulatory hurdle, securing research and development certification from the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) for all twelve registered models of its Texatron Fusion Engine platform. The development was shared by American Fusion’s Executive Chairman Brent Nelson in an interview, as reported by the company. This regulatory clearance applies to system hardware configurations across a wide power capacity spectrum, beginning with 500-kilowatt units and extending to large-scale architectures designed to output up to one gigawatt. With authorization completed, technical teams are preparing to start the next phase of experimental testing at Texas Tech University.
The primary technical objective of the upcoming experimental sequence is to verify nuclear fusion reactions inside the Texatron confinement hardware. Operational research teams plan to gather diagnostic measurements concerning plasma dynamics, specifically tracking core plasma temperatures, particle densities, and magnetic containment behaviors during operational cycles.
Oil Price – July 23, 2026
The AI Paradox Reshaping Clean Energy Research
Artificial intelligence is a double-edged sword for the energy sector. The rapid buildout of data centers to support widespread integration of large language models in virtually every economic sector imaginable, from our energy grids to your electric toothbrush – yes, really – is pushing energy demand growth projections to unprecedented levels, threatening to far outpace energy capacity additions and imperil energy security on a global scale. On the other hand, artificial intelligence holds enormous promise for improving energy efficiency in a wide range of systems and may hold the key to unlocking next-gen clean energy methods and technologies that could be integral to enabling feasible decarbonization pathways.
In the clean energy sector, artificial intelligence is being used to improve forecasting models for more sophisticated and accurate predictions of energy supply and demand, leading to greater grid stability at a time when our electricity grids have never been more stressed. Researchers are also increasingly using large language models to conduct “needle in a haystack” type inquiries to find the best methods and materials for certain use cases, accomplishing in months what would take a whole team of scientists years to achieve through trial and error methodologies.
Utility Dive – July 23, 2026
FERC eyes ‘grid-enhancing technology’ incentives: Chairman Swett
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has created a task force on “grid-enhancing technologies” to see how the agency can support them, possibly with incentives, FERC Chairman Laura Swett said Wednesday. Utilities have proactively started using GETs — which include dynamic line ratings, advanced power flow controllers and high-performance conductors — and their cost-saving data is now available, Swett told the U.S. Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee during an oversight hearing.
The Federal Power Act bars FERC from requiring utilities to use GETs, but the agency can direct transmission owners to analyze them, which can show what the most economic option is when considering new transmission infrastructure, according to Swett. In addition, FERC could incorporate GETs into its processes for doling out incentives to transmission owners and developers, FERC Commissioner Judy Chang said. When they seek incentives, FERC could ask them to explain what technologies they’re implementing, what else they have considered and why they are not using the best technologies available, she said.
Regulatory
Mother Jones – July 24, 2026
Trump’s EPA Wants Fewer People Asking Questions About Data Center Pollution
The Trump administration is quietly considering a rule change that could make it easier for polluters to build facilities—including certain gas plants and diesel generators that power data centers—with little to no notice to the public. On Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency held a public hearing on a proposed rule change that would hand the power to states to decide how the public participates in the permitting process for certain new sources of air pollution.
The proposed rollback comes as data centers face greater pushback across the US, with many communities using the permitting process to try to slow down development. Any changes could have major consequences for how ordinary people are given notice about new or expanded polluting facilities coming into their neighborhoods. “As someone actively working in communities with data centers, I know this to be fundamentally true: People want to have a say,” Vanessa Lynch, a Pennsylvania organizer with Moms Clean Air Force, said at the EPA hearing.