A lot has happened over the last few months, with oil prices rising and gas prices falling.  Some highlights follow.

West Virginia has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with China Energy, the first step in creating a government/business relationship.  The goal of the relationship will be to develop natural gas downstream facilities in West Virginia.  This is great news for West Virginia.

Oil prices climbed above $60/bbl and pretty much stayed there, thanks to OPEC and Russia extending their policy of keeping production limited.

Cotenancy has passed the West Virginia legislature.  The highlights of the legislation are that if 75% of the owners of a given tract sign a lease, the other 25% can be forced into a lease at the best terms that the other owners signed up at.  There are more details and we’ll get to that in another post another day.

Renewables are not pushing oil, gas, and coal out of the marketplace.  The data and the article are from last year, but the trends are long-term so the article is still worth reading.

Tree-sitters have effectively pushed back the timeline for the Mountain Valley Pipeline to be built.  It will be interesting to see how long this tree-sitting continues.