International
US Energy News
ENB Weekly Rig Count Comparison of Baker Hughes, Enverus and WellDatabase — Rigs Are Up
As of mid-October 2026, U.S. drilling activity continues to firm. Baker Hughes reported its closely watched weekly rotary rig count at 603 for the week ending October 9 (up 5 week-over-week and up 56 year-over-year from 547). WellDatabase’s U.S. Rig Report dated 10.14.2026 showed 608 total rigs (up 6 week-over-week and up 52 year-over-year). Enverus’ […]
Finance
Electrical Generation / Utilities
What Net-Zero Policies Add to Your Fuel and Power Bill, State by State
California’s Cap-and-Invest and Low Carbon Fuel Standard added about 47 cents a gallon in July (CEC). Washington’s carbon auction and clean-fuel rules add roughly 36–74 cents. The federal RFS is a separate 1-to-45-cent fight over gross credits versus net pump pass-through. We map the published estimates, keep taxes and refinery closures in their own buckets, […]
EIA Expects a Mixed Picture for Winter Fuel Costs This Year
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its 2026–27 Winter Fuels Outlook on October 6, 2026, alongside the October Short-Term Energy Outlook. The outlook paints a mixed picture for household heating costs this winter (November through March). Homes that primarily heat with natural gas or propane—about half of U.S. households—are expected to spend less than […]
AI / Data Center
Who Pays For Data Center Power, and 9 other huge stories on the Energy News Beat Stand Up
Hat tip to the Daily Caller and Simon August, Energy Reporter Data centers are powering the AI revolution—but who’s paying the bill? In this episode of Energy News Beat, host Stu Turley digs into a $29.4 billion question that’s about to hit your electricity bill. Federal regulators just rejected most of PJM’s plan to make […]
FERC Rejects Most of PJM’s Data Center Plan, and the $29.4 Billion Question of Who Pays Is Still Open
If you live in one of the 13 states or D.C. served by PJM, data centers are already on your power bill. The grid’s own market monitor puts their added capacity cost at $29.4 billion over four auctions. On Friday evening, federal regulators threw out most of PJM’s plan to make new data centers bring […]
Global Demand for Power is growing Faster Than Grids can support
Global electricity demand is growing faster than the grids that have to carry it. The constraint is no longer just generation. It is the hardware that steps voltage up and down—large power transformers and the related substation gear—and the industrial base that used to build them. The International Energy Agency’s Electricity 2026 report puts global […]
North Carolina’s Republican-controlled Utilities Commission has drawn a rare line in the sand.
September 18, 2026, the North Carolina Utilities Commission denied Duke Energy Progress a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity for a new natural-gas simple-cycle combustion turbine at the Sherwood H. Smith Jr. Energy Complex in Richmond County. The denial is without prejudice, meaning Duke can refile. The message, however, is clear: data-center load forecasts and […]
Oracle’s huge data center project declares force majeure. Is this the first warning sign in the data center space?
On Thursday, September 24, 2026, Bloomberg reported that Oracle sent a force majeure notice to the developer of Project Jupiter — the 1,400-acre AI campus in Doña Ana County, New Mexico — in an effort to defer payments if the facility misses its planned 2028 in-service date. Shares of Oracle fell about 4–5%. Blue Owl […]











































