ExxonMobil Joliet Refinery Floods and Stays Offline as Midwest Diesel Hits Records

One of the Midwest’s most important diesel and gasoline plants is still dark. ExxonMobil’s Joliet refinery in unincorporated Channahon Township, Illinois — about 40 miles southwest of Chicago — remains offline after a Sunday power outage and a subsequent flood that overwhelmed a pump. ZeroHedge flagged the outage overnight as “one of the largest diesel […]

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South Korea’s Hyosung Heavy Industries has locked in ₩386.5 billion (about $277–$287 million) in ultra-high-voltage transformer contracts with two unnamed U.S. Big Tech companies for new AI data centers—one in the South and one in the North.

The award is smaller than some of Hyosung’s earlier 2026 utility mega-deals, but it is strategically important: hyperscalers are now buying grid hardware directly, and Hyosung is one of the few firms that can deliver 765 kV equipment from a U.S. factory. The split is ₩220 billion of 765 kV transformers for the southern site […]

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WellDatabase Weekly Rig Report for July 18, 2026: US Rig Count Climbs Up 11 with Strong Horizontal and Oil Activity

The latest WellDatabase US Rig Report (dated July 18, 2026) shows the U.S. active drilling rig count at 567, marking a solid +11 week-over-week (WoW) increase and +37 year-over-year (YoY) gain. This reflects resilient drilling activity amid a stable-to-rising trend over the past 12 months, with the count holding in the mid-to-high 500s range. Key […]

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Largest US power grid PJM escalates emergency actions to avoid blackouts

The largest U.S. regional transmission organization, PJM Interconnection, escalated emergency measures on July 3, 2026, issuing a federal alert to cut electricity consumption across its vast territory amid generator outages, overloaded high-voltage transmission lines, and surging air-conditioning demand from a prolonged heatwave. PJM, which manages the electric grid for approximately 67 million people, activated demand-response […]

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China Starts Prefabricated Power Hub for Data Centers, CCTV Says. – There is a right way to do Data Centers Emerging

China is moving fast to solve one of the biggest bottlenecks in the global AI race: powering data centers quickly and cheaply. According to state broadcaster CCTV, the country has just launched its first prefabricated computing power hub in the eastern city of Qingdao, Shandong province. This modular power solution promises to slash construction time […]

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Since 2007, Shale Gas Has Saved U.S. Consumers Approximately $200 Billion Annually — A Quiet Revolution in Affordability

A new analysis from the Energy Institute at Haas at UC Berkeley quantifies what many in the energy sector have long known: the shale gas revolution, powered by hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, has delivered extraordinary savings to American consumers. According to Lucas Davis’s May 2026 working paper and accompanying blog post, shale gas has […]

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The data center doomers must be defeated – But not at the cost of our family farms and water

The Washington Examiner was right on target in its May 16, 2026, editorial: the “data center doomers” — the coalition of socialists, Democrats, and foreign-funded activists pushing moratoriums and fear-mongering — must be defeated. Data centers are the backbone of the AI revolution, national security, economic growth, and America’s edge over China. Blocking their hands […]

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What is Going On with AI and Data Centers in the US?

The AI boom has supercharged America’s data center industry, turning what was once a steady infrastructure play into one of the fastest-growing drivers of electricity demand in the country. Hyperscalers and AI startups are racing to build massive facilities packed with GPUs that devour power at unprecedented rates. From rural Texas fields to Virginia’s “Data […]

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