Natural gas prices are at $3.32/MMBtu, a big drop from a high of $4.25 about three weeks ago.

Drilling rigs are at 583, down from a high of 593 four weeks ago.

Gas storage is at 1,830 Bcf, which means we’ve gone from pushing the five-year low to almost being right back at the five-year average in about two months. That’s a lot of storage build in a short time.

Natural gas is not going to be replaced by renewables as a source of energy any time soon.

The EPA is going to be revisiting the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) definition again. Whenever this changes, it changes the regulatory reach of federal agencies.

Chevron is jumping into the world of AI data centers with both feet.

Reuters has an article going into some of the main factors driving natural gas prices up at the moment.

OilPrice also has an article about natural gas prices, with a little comparison to oil.

MarketWatch thinks that natural gas prices will predict peace in Ukraine. Wouldn’t that be something?

The EPA study on LNG exports will have recently closed to public comments when this blog is posted, but here’s an article about the study and its effects on the EPA’s approval process.

Wowee! Greenpeace has had a judgment come down against it in the amount of $660 million! That’s a serious chunk of change! It will get appealed, but you have to wonder if Greenpeace will be able to avoid bankruptcy.

While the Trump Administration is making it easier to drill for oil and natural gas, the industry is saying it’s not going to just open the floodgates and “drill, baby, drill”. The industry wants to make money, and it’s currently happy and healthy at $60-70 oil and $3-4 natural gas. More product means lower prices, and lower prices mean less profit. I expect to see things remain roughly how they are.

The United States’ first offshore LNG export terminal has been approved.

Linked here is a short article about what’s driving oil prices right now.

If you’d like to read a local article about Antero Resources in which Antero gets to “toot its own horn” a little (I genuinely don’t mind that they point out the good things they do), this is the one for you.

Hope Gas hoping to abandon a bunch of old pipelines is still making news. The article states that there will be a public hearing on May 14 in Charleston. This seems like the kind of thing they ought to do local town hall meetings about. The article also points out that a lot of the pipelines Hope is planning to abandon carry gas away from old conventional wells. Those wells would not be able to produce, and would end up classified as abandoned wells under WV law. Small-time producers will not like that. I bet they work with Hope to transfer some of those lines to themselves. Oh, and will you look at that, there was a town hall type meeting in Ritchie County last month with Hope Gas, but it seems to have left people without answers.

Freeport LNG shut down again, this time due to a lightning strike. Now, I’m no expert here, but it seems like a lightning strike in Louisiana is a pretty predictable event, and should probably have been taken into account when designing the place.

EQT’s Toby Rice told WV lawmakers that the new mantra is “build, baby, build” in reference to pipelines and power plants.

The West Virginia Gas and Oil association hosted its third annual Gas and Oil day at the State Capitol. It looks like the point of it is to inform legislators about the importance of the oil and gas industry to the State of West Virginia. The executive director, Charlie Burd, published an opinion piece about oil and gas in WV.

It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about Cunningham Energy, which is now Cunningham Natural Resources. They used to be doing horizontal drilling in old oil bearing formations, and seemed to be getting reasonably good production. However, they seem to have had some legal issues, then a year or so ago they merged with another company. Now they’ve announced $50MM in financing to drill wells in the Big Injun, Weir, and Berea sandstones in West Virginia, and for acquisition of other companies. It will be interesting to see if they really start drilling in WV. It seemed like a smart way of doing business.

Here’s a little analysis of how the tariffs are likely to affect LNG prices.

A combination of tariff effects and an OPEC+ production increase has lowered the price of crude oil, which should reflect soon in the price we pay at the gas pumps. Here’s a little more detail about the OPEC+ production increase. Here’s another article with analysis of why the production increase happened.

BKV Corporation is refracking wells in the Barnett Shale. The Barnett was one of the earliest fracking plays, followed closely by the Marcellus Shale. If refracking works in the Barnett, it should work in the Marcellus, and for all the same reasons that it works in the Barnett.

A natural-gas powered data center has been proposed for an area just to the north of the town of Davis, WV. It will take up 500 acres, and produce 1,656 megawatts of electricity. It’s a big project. This is the kind of thing we need here in West Virginia. Unfortunately, Davis is a tourist town, and the people are very protective of keeping it touristy. I am on their side on this one. There are other places in West Virginia where this would be more welcome, or at least get less opposition. However, there aren’t a lot of places in West Virginia where you can find 500 contiguous acres of reasonably flat land, so I understand why the developers chose this particular site. I’m not an expert on the area, but I’m confident there are places farther out from Davis that would also be suitable for building something like this. It will be interesting to follow this and see how it plays out.

There are four factors affecting the price of oil right now.

There’s a shortage of gas turbines for power generation, which AI companies rely on to produce power for data centers. I couldn’t find an article that wasn’t behind a paywall, but keep an eye out for news about this.

The West Virginia Senate passed a House bill, with amendments, regulating microgrids for data centers. The amendments still have to be reviewed and voted on by the House, but it looks like this is going to make it into law.

The fracking waste storage location in Martin’s Ferry that went bankrupt and stored way more waste than it was allowed to is just about cleaned up.