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.