AI Data Centers are Triggering Another Boom in the Shale Patch

Pennsylvania took a major leap forward in the AI data center sector this summer, cheered on by an enthusiastic White House.

On July 15, President Donald Trump appeared at the Inaugural Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit and celebrated more than $90 billion in projects that various investment, technical and energy companies pledged to bring into or build in the state.

One of the key projects was the Homer City Redevelopment project. The proposed build will transform what was Pennsylvania’s largest coal-burning power plant into a 3,200-acre AI data center campus powered by natural gas—a lot of it.

Power turbines are scheduled to begin arriving in 2026, fed with $15 billion worth of natural gas provided by EQT Corp. The two parties are working on a finalized agreement, EQT CEO Toby Rice told investors in August.

In Ohio, The Williams Cos. Inc. (WMB) is developing the $1.6 billion Socrates South Power Generation Project near New Albany. Approved by the Ohio Power Siting Board in June 2025, the project consists of a 200 megawatt (MW) natural gas–fired plant with an adjacent electrical substation.

Socrates includes a power generation facility in Ohio paired with a supportive pipeline network and backed by 10-year contracts that suggest annual revenue of $320 million in WMB’s transmission segment, according to East Daley Analytics.

In other parts of the state, about 2.2 gigawatts (GW) are ready for data centers that will host AWS, DBT, Google and Vantage.

Needless to say, developers are excited.

“I want to introduce you to and welcome you to our fourth industrial revolution,” said John Augustine, president and CEO of Penn’s Northeast, an economic development group in Pennsylvania, at a state legislative hearing on data center policy.

As AI development and cloud computing accelerate U.S. energy consumption, the long-awaited demand for natural gas to support on-site generation has finally arrived in the hot spots of Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Meanwhile, Texas and the Southwest continue to see new requirements for reliable and flexible power, primarily from natural gas, though solar and nuclear are playing a role.

Data centers reshape regional energy demand

Pennsylvania’s robust natural gas production has made it a focal point for the data center boom. In August, Energy Capital Partners joined the crowded field when it announced plans for a $5 billion data center in the southeast corner of the state.

Regional energy demand is already being reshaped. Data centers in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Ohio consumed some 11 million megawatt-hours in 2023, accounting for as much as 5% of total electricity use in those states, according to the Ohio River Valley Institute.

With data center capacity projected to increase from 7.3 GW in 2023, to as much as 19.4 GW by 2030, the new facilities could consume between 0.26 Bcf/d and 1.47 Bcf/d—over 4% of Appalachia’s existing production—if powered entirely by natural gas.

Ohio is also seeing gas-fired generation tied to new data centers. For instance, call center operator PowerConnex filed to construct a 120 MW natural gas plant in New Albany to support a major upcoming data center, expected by early 2026.

In July, Chesapeake Utilities announced that its Ohio transmission company, Aspire Energy Express, signed a deal to build a $10 million pipeline that will serve a fuel cell facility at a data center campus.

The dynamic of surging demand met with on-site generation and new gas plant infrastructure underscores a market shift, S&P Global said in an August report.

PJM, the region’s electrical grid manager, has projected electricity loads growing by 5% every year through the next decade. Until recently, grid demand had remained flat for 10 years, according to the Ohio River Valley Institute.

While some facilities have publicized their nuclear or solar plans, natural gas has long emerged as the go-to energy source for data center developers facing grid constraints or worried about reliability.

Utilities have since been locking in gas offtake deals with data centers to secure pipelines and generation capacity in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas, where grid access remains competitive and constrained, according to S&P Global.

Billions for power expansion in Texas

Texas has also seen a steadily increasing number of data center announcements. Vantage announced the latest mega-center proposal for Texas: a $25 billion, 1.4 GW campus in Shackelford County, about 90 miles east of Fort Worth.

The campus is located within 15 miles of several major natural gas pipelines.

In traditional energy hubs like Texas, the volume of data center expansion continues to require reliable gas power, even as ERCOT, the state’s grid manager, discusses problems with the electrical infrastructure.

Texas energy regulators have been granted authority under a new state law to curtail demand from massive users during power emergencies—specifically targeting data centers, crypto operations and industrial facilities—to maintain grid stability.

ERCOT anticipates that demand may nearly double by 2030, much of it driven by large energy users such as data centers.

In Houston, NRG Energy is acquiring 18 natural gas power plants for $12 billion to double its generation capacity, a move to meet escalating needs from AI-driven data center growth.

Solar and battery storage continue to rise. Skybox Datacenters is creating a 300 MW data center powered entirely by renewable energy, the company claims.

However, natural gas remains the mainstay for baseload and flexible power, such as Oracle’s proposed gas turbine system in Abilene, which will be set up behind the meter.

Midstream company Energy Transfer reported a steadily increasing number of data center deals.

“We’ve signed three deals in Texas,” said Mackie McCrea, co-CEO of Energy Transfer, during the company’s earnings call in August. “We’re very close to two more.”

The supply request from a single campus has hit 380,000 cf/d and may reach up to 475,000 cf/d, he said.

Energy Transfer (ET) has also been active further west. Two of Arizona’s major utilities have signed a deal for natural gas capacity from ET’s Transwestern Pipeline Desert Southwest expansion project to meet demand from the data center sector.

Elevated gas reliance is redrawing the energy map

The International Energy Agency projects data centers will drive 10% of global electricity demand growth by 2030. Western economies will likely see a sharp rise in demand and turn to natural gas as the primary fuel to meet it, the agency said in an April report.

In Pennsylvania and Ohio, developers are integrating on-site gas generation and new power plants to accommodate surging energy demand. Natural gas also remains the backbone in Texas and in potential plants closer to California.

The data center boom is redrawing the U.S. energy map, with Appalachia’s shale gas producers now squarely at the center of digital growth and Texas still leveraging its midstream might to meet rising load.

Source: Segrist, Sandy. “AI Data Centers Are Triggering Another Boom in the Shale Patch.” AI and Hyperscale Projects Drive Soaring Natural Gas Demand in Appalachia, While Large-Scale Campuses Sprout in Texas and the Southwest. - Hart Energy, 19 Sept. 2025, www.hartenergy.com/technology-and-innovation/artificial-intelligence/he-ai-data-centers-boom-shale/