Natural gas prices are $1.69/MMBtu, having hit a high of $1.89 and a low of $1.58. Gas in storage is at 2,283 Bcf, still well above the five year average, but better than it was a month ago. Drilling rigs are at 621, having gone up to as high as 629. We’ve been moving mostly sideways on rig counts since about October of last year.

Some protesters spent about 36 hours inside the Mountain Valley Pipeline. That’s a view that very few people will ever get.

The economy as a whole is benefitting from lower natural gas prices, even though it’s not good for producers or royalty owners.

Electricity burn from AI is a growth sector for natural gas, particularly in Appalachia.

The House has passed legislation that would affect some of the Biden Administration’s environmental policies. It’s unlikely to even advance to the Senate, however.

The Saudis’ long-term plan includes a 60% increase in natural gas production.

The PA cracker plant has been operating under a construction permit for air quality purposes. It has been notified that it will have to apply for a regular permit within 120 days.

Freeport LNG is shutting down trains for maintenance and inspection.

Sixteen states have filed a lawsuit against the Biden Administration over the LNG export approval pause.

Some smart people up at WVU are working on how to make hydrogen less expensive. Not that there are a lot of uses for hydrogen as a fuel right now, but if the price comes down enough, maybe people will start adopting it.

A lawsuit against the Mountain Valley Pipeline is being appealed to the Supreme Court. This is the one that challenges the eminent domain power, and I’m all for that challenge. Eminent domain has been abused.

MVP is also being cited for environmental violations. I’m all for the pipeline, but dang if the builders didn’t mess just about everything up. There are good ways to do things, and bad ways to do things, and MVP has done just about everything badly from the beginning.

This article notes that Jim Justice vetoed a bill that would have made larger solar farms even cheaper in West Virginia. It’s not directly oil and gas related, but the same thing has happened with natural gas fired power plants. Jim Justice is a coal man, and has hamstrung the natural gas industry in order to protect his coal interests. This is bad for West Virginia.

The legal challenge against West Virginia’s forced pooling law has been dismissed, the judge stating that the plaintiffs had not shown standing, which essentially means they hadn’t been affected by the law in any way. We know of one attorney (not us) that wants to challenge the forced pooling law. If you have been affected by the forced pooling law and want to challenge it, give us a call and we’ll put you in touch with him. 304-473-1403.

This is….not great. The small town of Martin’s Ferry on the Ohio side of the river now has a hazardous materials mess on its hands. The hazardous materials are said to consist of waste from the fracking process, though I suspect that what they really mean is waste from the drilling process as it sounds like the waste is solid, not liquid. The article goes into some detail about the City Council meeting, but there’s enough detail about the actual situation to see that it’s bad. Somebody needs to clean it up. Hopefully the company that brought the hazardous materials to the site will take care of it, but when they’re the ones that caused it in the first place, it seems unlikely.

Chesapeake Energy will put about 80 wells into “suspended animation” this year. None seem to be in West Virginia, but this kind of thing is happening throughout the industry. It’s necessary, but will temporarily reduce or delay royalty payments.

Jerry Jones has doubled down on his investment in natural gas by buying an additional $100 million in stock in Comstock. Long-term, natural gas prices will come back.

The U.S. beat out Australia and Qatar in 2023 as the world’s largest LNG exporter. It wouldn’t take much for the U.S. to decisively take that top spot, but there’s this “pause” going on at the moment. Also, Freeport just can’t seem to operate continuously for an entire year.

Mountain V Oil and Gas is a West Virginia company based here in Buckhannon. They’ve acquired the assets of AXP Energy in the Appalachian region.

Someone did a deep dive on investing in natural gas over on Seeking Alpha, and decided that investing in companies that are working in the Marcellus/Utica area is the best bet at the moment.

OPEC+ has increased production cuts, resulting in higher oil prices, resulting in higher prices at the pump.

Marcellus/Utica production is down, and natural gas prices are up. Well, relatively up.

Here’s a report that says increased LNG exports do not affect the domestic price of natural gas. Now, I’m sure that’s true to some extent, but I guarantee that if exports were completely cut off, natural gas prices would tank even farther than they are now, and stay much lower on average. That said, the data is compelling, and the real driver of domestic natural gas prices, based off my personal observation of the industry, has bounced back and forth between weather and production.

Iraq produced more oil than its OPEC+ quota allowed for, as usual.

The Biden Administration’s LNG export pause could be used as a bargaining chip to get House Republicans to approve a Ukraine aid deal. I did not expect that.

The price of natural gas is down, but it won’t be too much longer before it starts to go back up.

The ridiculously low price of natural gas is incentivizing producers who have a lot of associated gas (natural gas that comes out of oil wells) to not produce as much oil as the current price of oil would otherwise dictate.

West Virginia has banned four more banks from getting state contracts because of the banks’ stance on using oil and gas.

Two more people blocked MVP work, this time in a giant wooden opossum.