We’re a day late, so these numbers are for December 16, 2020. Rig counts are at 338, up by 16 from last month. Natural gas is at $2.71/MMBtu, and has gone as high as $2.90 and as low as $2.40. Gas storage is down more than expected, but still higher than the five year average.

The PTT Chemical cracker plant’s final decision has been pushed back to 2H2021.

The new longest onshore horizontal well measures in at 3.8 miles long and 2 miles down. It’s somewhere in eastern Ohio. It’s in the Utica shale. If a company asks you for Utica rights (Tug Hill is adamant about getting Utica in Wetzel right now) then they might actually be interested in producing them. Utica hasn’t been as exciting as Marcellus because of technology constraints, but the technology is clearly coming along.

Production from almost all regions is expected to drop off, according to the EIA. This is a clear result of fewer rigs. Rig counts are coming back, though, and efficiency continues to increase, so any supply deficit that might come up will be short term and easily made up.

We haven’t heard much from Northeast Natural Energy in a while. Today there’s news that they’re receiving $65 million for their acquisition and production program. So, they’re still in business. Most of their oil and gas production and leasing work to date has been in Monongalia County, West Virginia. Will it stay that way? They didn’t get what most would consider an enormous amount of money for lease acquisition, so I suspect they’ll stay close to their already-acquired property.

Seems like everybody is predicting natural gas prices to average above $3.00/MMBtu next year.

And just like that, interest in natural gas production picks up. So surprised….

I’m no foreign policy expert, but more oil money in the hands of the Saudis does not strike me as a good thing.

Mexico made $2.5 billion dollars on its oil hedge this year. Not bad for a year’s work.

Converting natural gas to a solid at room temperature would be a game changer. The usual question applies, will this new technology scale up?

OPEC and Russia have agreed to increase oil production by 500,000 bpd starting in January.

American shale executives apparently think that oil demand is going to be somewhat stagnant for a while. That’s good for West Virginia oil and gas owners, as our natural gas won’t have as much competition from gas produced from oil wells.

Long range weather predictions are calling for more mild weather, so natural gas futures have gone down.

There is only one thing that is going to slow down oil and gas production–a lack of funding. It seems that banks have figured out that oil and gas companies are bad investments, and the funds are drying up. Give it a few years, though, and a new crop of recently-graduated-from-college investment bankers will come along and throw money at oil and gas again because they don’t know any better.

Egypt has significantly increased its hedge on oil to protect against higher prices. Most interesting.

There were two oil and gas groups in West Virginia. Now there is one. Neither of them really advocated for mineral owners rights, so it’s not incredibly important for my clients to know about this, but it does count as West Virginia oil and gas news.

An article that argues that the end of oil and gas is not near.

Producers in the Marcellus/Utica region have been shutting in wells for economic (supply and demand) reasons. RBNEnergy goes in depth on the subject. This is useful to understand because if your well is shut-in it will affect your royalty check.