The price of natural gas today is about $2.69/MMBtu.

Oil and gas news has again been a bit slow. Mainly it’s more of the same.

EQT is cutting its capital expenditures for 2020, and even the last quarter of 2019. Cutting them a lot. This means less drilling and less taking of leases.

West Virginia tax revenues are below what was initially projected, in part because of a lack of demand for gas and in part because the pipeline construction (ACP and MVP) got shut down.

Rig counts continue to fall. At some point this means underproduction, but for the time being we have plenty of gas. The important fact to figure out is when the reduction in rigs will result in too little gas. Somebody who can figure that out accurately can make a lot of money in the stock market.

This Forbes article focuses on oil, but the economic forces are true for gas producers as well. Everybody is slowing drilling. Everybody is saying they will produce the same. Eventually they will have to increase drilling as wells simply run out of gas. When? Who knows.

The Atlantic Coast Pipeline people think they’ll be building again in summer of 2020.

Disney Cruise Lines has ordered three LNG powered cruise ships. This will probably do more to reduce pollution than the Cash for Clunkers program did. Cruise ships are ridiculously dirty.

Cunningham Energy here in West Virginia is doing alright for itself. One of its well pads had produced (over its lifetime) 100,000 barrels of oil and 91 million cubic feet of wet gas. That doesn’t seem all that exciting until you realize that the wells they are drilling are about a tenth the cost of a Marcellus shale well. The ROI is pretty good.

A review of several weather sites says that 2019-2020 winter weather is expected to bring average temperatures or above average temperatures, but plenty of storms. Of course, there’s always a site or two that say it’s going to be colder than usual, and a site or two that say it’s going to be warmer than usual. Guess we’ll see, but it seems unlikely that we’ll have anything other than normal winter temperatures.

CNX is using e-fracking (using natural gas to power electric generators which provide the energy to push the fracking fluid into the formation), and went all e-fracking on a well pad in Green County, PA in May. It’s cheaper for the company, quieter by a lot, and produces fewer emissions.

Big news! Arsenal has filed for bankruptcy, again! They filed back in February of this year, zipped through the process in 10 days, and now are at it again. It seems this is more about restructuring debt than anything, as all the major investors are onboard.

It’s been a bit of a slow couple weeks for oil and gas news. When the most exciting thing to report is 3rd quarter earnings reports, you know it’s slow. Granted, you do get a rough idea of where the experts think the industry is going, but it’s just not…much.

Natural gas prices today are $2.60/MMBtu. They had gone over $2.70/MMBtu a day or two ago. It’s a bit of a surprise as gas storage has gone over the five year average, but I’ve stopped trying to predict the movements of the natural gas price. That way madness lies.

Prices for natural gas coming out of the Marcellus/Utica region have dropped farther than the price at the Henry Hub. It seems that’s primarily because of the TETCO pipeline exploding and being shut down, constricting the flow of gas from the Marcellus/Utica region to the Henry Hub, as well as the Cove Point LNG plant shutting down for maintenance.

Exxon-Mobile is looking for another site for a cracker plant. Seems like going to the Parkersburg, WV location that was already going to be used as a cracker plant is a no-brainer, but there must be some other factors that we’re not aware of driving the decision.

EnergyFuse.com summarizes the various oil production outages around the world and notes that fears of a global recession as well as lower demand have countered the usual upward movement in price these would cause.

The Mountain Valley Pipeline has been ordered to stop construction pending additional regulatory research into some endangered species.

A trash hauling company, Republic Services, is adding to its CNG fleet.

Not being a financier, I’m not sure whether Range selling another 0.5% overriding royalty (total of 3.5% sold to date) is a good thing or a bad thing. The article states that the cash will be used for share buyback, so maybe it’s a good thing. But selling off future income at (presumably) a significant discount seems awfully short-sighted.

Burning natural gas has saved consumers a huge amount of money over the last ten years.

Yet another company is being accused of underpaying royalties. I’m beginning to think that there are two kinds of royalty owners, those who have been underpaid and those who are being underpaid.

Every once in a while we’ll take a look at one of the quarterly reports from a company that’s active in West Virginia. This one is from Southwestern Energy, a/k/a SWN. While they’re geared towards investors, there can be interesting nuggets for royalty and mineral owners at times. In general, SWN is producing more, and using a lot less money. Spoiler: that’s true for all the other producers, too.

Also in regards to SWN, they do a pretty good job of taking care of the water they use.

The amount of LNG exports has doubled, again.

Antero is one of the more important oil and gas companies in West Virginia. Their 3rd quarter report sheds light on why they closed the water treatment plant and how they expect next year to go.