Natural gas prices are at $2.41/MMBtu. Whew. That’s low. They hit a low of $2.07 and a high of $3.01. It’s very weather dependent right now. With some cold weather in the forecast, we’ll probably see prices climbing back up to around $3.00. Natural gas storage levels are at 2,030 billion cubic feet, right at the top of the five year average. That number is down from last week, of course, but about 500 billion cubic feet more than we had last year at this time. Drilling rigs are at 746, down from 761 last month. Oil and gas producers have seen the writing on the wall and are brining less new product online. That will keep prices from really bottoming out, but weather is always the biggest factor.

I’m not the only one that thinks the price of natural gas has bottomed out. There are more articles out there that say the same thing. While the price may not rebound strongly, and there’s always the off chance that it will go down some more, I think we’ve hit bottom.

Did you know that the main thing keeping new LNG plants from opening up is the difficulty of finding buyers? That’s what this article seems to suggest. I really though there was more than enough demand out there in our great big world, but that’s not necessarily the case for LNG.

OPEC+ is sticking to its guns. They won’t change the production numbers they arrived at last fall, which means that oil prices (and consequently prices at the pump) are not likely to go down this year.

EQT seems to be expecting natural gas prices to stay roughly the same over the course of this year.

The cracker plant up in PA has been hit with fines over its emissions. Turns out, when your plant isn’t running right and you have to flare a bunch of gas, you emit more waste particles. They should really have gotten that plant running right before turning it on. I know that’s a little simplistic, as that plant is ridiculously complex, but they really should have it running right by now.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is suing the Biden Administration over the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule. It’s complicated, but expanding the rule to include more waters and wetlands essentially takes away State authority, giving it to the federal government. There are a lot of ramifications, too. It’s worth doing some research on.

Freeport LNG has been greenlighted to restart two of its three liquefaction trains. One is already operational, and it seems as if the second will be operational by the time this blog post is published. It’s unclear how much longer the third will take.

If you’d like to read Antero’s Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript, it’s available. We haven’t read it yet, but there’s always something of interest to be gleaned from it.

Tax values for oil and gas rights in West Virginia are outrageous. I’m not sure who the legislature had “fix” the tax valuation problem, but they didn’t fix it. One of the main issues is that the tax bills are two years behind. People are paying for 2021 in 2023. It’s weird. They also value the minerals in the ground based on the production, which is just not an accurate value. I can’t criticize too much, though, because I don’t have a solution. This is going to take a bunch of smart people some serious time to figure out. Or maybe they could just look at how some other oil and gas states do it and pick one that makes sense. Don’t reinvent the wheel unless you have to, folks.

A post over at Rigzone does a good job analyzing the short-term price of natural gas. The short story is that we are probably at rock bottom, but the price of natural gas isn’t going to rise much until later in the year.

Cheniere intends to expand Sabine Pass. More LNG exports! It’ll be years away, of course, as this is just the planning stage.

Senator Ted Cruz has introduced legislation that would increase LNG exports. Again, it’s early in the process so don’t get too excited yet.

Permitting reform is back on the menu, folks! Ah, but it’s going to be a long slog, I fear. I’ll expect permitting reform when I see it.

There’s a little doom and gloom popping up in the press. It’s hard to predict oil and gas prices and activity. The main problem is that natural gas prices are affected by the weather, and we don’t know for sure what the weather next week is going to be like, let alone next year.

The coal lobby doesn’t like the natural gas bill that the WV legislature is looking at, and has proposed its own bill for coal.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service has released another ruling stating that the Mountain Valley Pipeline will not hurt endangered species. It has come under quick attack from environmental groups.

Freeport LNG has been given approval to restart its third and final liquefaction train.

Here’s a bit of a doom and gloom article from Irina Slav over at oilprice.com. Perhaps doom and gloom is too strong of a description, but whenever you see a headline like, “The Shale Boom is Over” it’s hard to think in other terms. The headline is a quote from Pioneer CEO, Scott Sheffield, and is supported by some numbers and logic. And it may very well be true. The boom in the Marcellus Shale area is certainly over, but ongoing production is not. We’re filling the pipelines out of this area all day every day, and it will be a long time before the pipelines start to run at less than full capacity on a regular basis. The only thing constraining the Marcellus is takeaway capacity. So we’re at the end of a boom, but you can’t define it as a bust.

Joe Manchin is opposing Joe Biden’s nominee for Interior Secretary. Speculate away.

A truck hauling drilling mud for Tug Hill/EQT spilled that drilling mud on 14 miles of roads in Marshall County. Somebody forgot to close a valve.