Natural gas prices are at $2.50/MMBtu, down from a high of $2.97 about two weeks ago, but up from a low of $2.28 in September. Gas storage levels are at 3,705 Bcf, getting closer to the five-year average. Drilling rigs are at 586, down from 590 in September.
EQT spilled about 12,600 gallons of produced (fracked a well and returned to the surface) water. The PA DEP report (first hyperlink in the article) says about 20 gallons escaped secondary containment. As far as spills go, this was a good one. Little actual damage, and some experience that will hopefully improve policies and procedures so future spills can be avoided. This spill happened in Greene County, PA, not in WV, but the operations and geography in Greene County are identical to WV, so I thought this was pertinent to us.
Will you look at that! For years now I’ve been telling people that nobody develops coal bed methane (CBM) any more. But CNX is opening up a new headquarters in Virginia that will have 75 employees and they’ll be developing CBM! I didn’t think there was enough profit in CBM any more to make it a good investment. Looks like CNX thinks otherwise. Luckily I’ve been telling my clients to reserve the CBM from their oil and gas leases. If CNX wants to develop the CBM, and my oil and gas clients own the CBM (a very fact-dependent analysis in WV, so maybe they do maybe they don’t), CNX will have to ask them for new leases. Of course, this particular operation appears to be limited to southwestern Virginia, but you never know if they might expand.
Someone drove into the above-ground equipment of a natural gas pipeline in Deer Park, Texas, starting an enormous fire that killed the driver and triggered a shelter in place warning while officials determined whether the driver had been part of a terrorist plot. It seems like it wasn’t a terrorist plot, but it’s weird, that’s for sure.
Oil and gas development in West Virginia really should have lead to an economic boom in the state. It has, but not as much of one as it should have. There are certainly places that are better off today than they were before the Marcellus shale. Doddridge County has some nicer parks than it used to, for instance. But the state has really squandered what could have been a complete game changer. Here’s an article that digs into this subject a little bit.
RBNEnergy analyzes the summer natural gas market.
Chesapeake says their deal to buy SWN should close in Q4 2024.
Toby Rice, CEO of EQT, thinks natural gas prices will remain below $3/MMBtu in the near term and that the government needs to stop regulating oil and gas.
The EIA has reported that West Virginia natural gas has the highest heat content of any gas produced in the United States. This is good (more energy) unless you can’t separate out the natural gas liquids from the methane. In that case, the producer is leaving money on the table, and royalty owners are losing out on more royalties.
The LNG permitting pause is creating uncertainty in the natural gas market, and foreign buyers are turning to Russia for natural gas supply.
The U.S. produces a lot of natural gas, and we’re becoming more dependent on it for our electricity. This can be problematic during the winter, when extreme cold events can stop production from natural gas wells.
If you’ve ever wondered what capping an old well looks like, Jerry Rig Everything did a video about it. The video was shot out west somewhere, but the process is going to be similar here in West Virginia. Heads up, there is quite a bit of ad time for the sponsor of the video. My apologies, but the capping process is shown in good detail, so maybe just fast forward if the advertisement is too much for you.
Rysted thinks we’ll need 400 more LNG carriers to handle all the gas the U.S. produces. I may be working in the wrong end of the industry.
A couple weeks ago, much of Libya’s oil production got shut down due to politics. The reasons behind the turmoil in the country are complex, and if you want to read about it in some depth, this is a good article for you.
The Martins Ferry frack waste storage facility that was not being properly operated is being cleaned up, with Phase 1 complete.
AI data centers are desperate for energy, and the power grid is taking too long to provide it, so data centers are looking into getting gas piped to their locations and generating the electricity on site.
EQT will begin to “ease curtailments” in October.
Here’s the story of the first ever horizontally fracked Marcellus shale well. I’d only ever known the date, so a few more details were welcome.
Chesapeake and Southwestern have merged. They are calling the new company Expand Energy. So if you have a lease with or are being paid royalties by SWN, sometime in the near future you’re going to be seeing a new name on the paperwork.
The legislature is deciding whether to give the State Health Department some control over low-level radioactive waste, presumably so that it can be processed in-state.
The LNG permitting pause was supposedly done to give the Feds time to conduct a study on the environmental effects of LNG production. A FOIA request has turned up evidence that that study was well underway in the year before the pause was announced.
Here are the results of a survey of oil and gas executives regarding the future price of natural gas. You’ll notice that they’re all over the place, in spite of these people being the most informed and most concerned about the price of gas. It’s literally impossible to predict the long-term price of gas. The best we can do is analyze and watch.
The EIA is predicting that natural gas prices will rise in 2025, brought on by reduced production this year (2024) and increased demand.