Natural gas prices are at $2.39/MMBtu, a significant jump up from the low prices of the last few months. Drilling rigs are at 603, down from 619. Gas storage is at 2,563 Bcf, well above the five year maximum.

Natural gas production in the Marcellus/Utica region is slowing while production in the Permian Basin is increasing, a result of the low price of natural gas and the relatively high price of oil, which the respective regions specialize in.

Natural gas exports hit an all-time high last year.

Charlie Burd, President of the West Virginia Gas and Oil Association, sat down and talked with Curtis Tate from WV Public Broadcasting. There’s very little earth-shattering info here, but it’s probably worth a quick read. He does dance around the question of why WV doesn’t have more natural gas fired power plants, which he has to do for politics’ sake. I don’t blame him for not taking a stronger stance on it. I’ll take that stance, though. Coal interests don’t want natural gas to have any more influence in West Virginia than it already does. Coal is dying, but the old guard is holding on to its influence as long and as hard as it can.

Produced water from Marcellus shale fracking operations could become a good source of lithium, a necessary component of many rechargeable batteries.

Another protester slowed down MVP construction, this one locking herself to an excavator.

The MVP is requesting a startup date of May 23, 2024. Update: the date is now May 31, 2024, or thereabouts.

EQT has entered into an agreement to sell 2.0 MTPA of natural gas to Texas LNG Brownsville, which will be liquefying 4.0 MTPA of natural gas starting in 2028.

I’m not what you could call an environmentalist, but this kind of news is still exciting to me because a clean environment is a healthy environment. The article notes that the majority of the decrease in emissions was due to a switch from coal to natural gas.

Use of natural gas went up 4% last year, and use of natural gas for producing electricity went up 7% last year. More and more of the country is putting natural gas to use for making electricity, but we in West Virginia still don’t have a natural gas fired power plant. I already mentioned that this month, but it’s just ridiculous. Politics…..

The Freeport LNG plant is back in operation, at least partially.

EQT CEO Toby Rice says the natural gas market is oversupplied, but demand is coming in the form of electricity needed to power AI.

That frack waste location in Martins Ferry that hit the news last month for storing way too much fracking waste has a long track record of financial problems and safety and environmental violations, laid off all its workers back in March, and says it doesn’t have the money to clean up its mess.

West Virginia politicians will challenge the EPA’s new power plant emissions rules.

The current problem with using hydrogen as an energy source is that no one is using it. However, if hydrogen were plentiful and cheap, use would go up. The following linked proposal could make hydrogen plentiful and cheap, as it would turn natural gas wells into hydrogen wells. Kinda wild, but really cool!

Well, well, well, someone’s finally going to build a natural gas fired power plant in West Virginia! In Doddridge County, no less. Makes a ton of sense! I do wonder where they’re going to get the water to cool the plant, though. The little river running through Blandville doesn’t look like it would supply enough.

Antero is producing 5% more gas than it did a year ago, which is the opposite of what a lot of other companies are currently doing. Antero is also making a lot less profit than it did a year ago, of course.

The U.S. government is throwing $392 million in grant money at the problem of aging natural gas pipeline infrastructure. It’s good that this is getting done, but I don’t know why the federal government should be paying for this, the pipeline companies should. They’ve been making money off the pipelines for decades, they should have stashed some of it away for upgrades and replacements.

A portion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline burst during hydrostatic pressure testing. This will probably set the start date back a bit.

Bloomberg says the expected global gas glut is not coming as soon as expected due to the U.S. not building out LNG facilities quite as quickly as was expected. We have a gas glut here, so prices are down here, but the rest of the world is not that way.

Like EQT’s CEO, Chevron’s CEO is talking about an upcoming increase in demand for natural gas due to data centers needed for AI.

Hope Gas is expanding again, buying Consumer’s Gas, which provides gas to 8,500 customers in the western part of West Virginia.

A company named Zefiro is putting a site in our own little town of Buckhannon, WV. Zefiro plugs abandoned wells and sells carbon credits.

Some landowners have filed a lawsuit against Tug Hill and EQT, alleging that the companies covertly deducted post-production costs by using a third party purchaser who paid the post-production costs and bought the gas at a reduced price to cover the expense. It’s the oldest scam in the book for oil and gas companies.

MVP got 13 slap-on-the-wrist fines.

Twenty-seven state have filed suit against the Biden Administration, in opposition to the new EPA power plant emissions rule.

Donald Trump would reverse the environmental regulations created by the Biden Administration. In fact, he promised oil and gas executives that if they would raise $1 billion for his campaign, he would do that on day one of his next presidency. I know politics works that way, but to put it that bluntly makes it seem like he can be bought.

An eminent domain property valuation case against the Mountain Valley Pipeline has been decided in favor of the landowners. The court upheld a value of over $500,000 for a little over eight acres of pipeline easement on a 560 acre tract. The value must include the diminished value of the adjacent property, because eight rural acres won’t go for over half a million dollars.

The U.S. government is giving the State of West Virginia $29.2 million to plug around 200 orphaned wells. This is a good thing. I just wish the people who had drilled those wells had plugged them, it shouldn’t be the government doing this.