This article over at RealMoney.com poses the question, “have American producers achieved sustainable profits?”  It doesn’t give an answer, but points out that Saudi Arabia is probably in a world of hurt either way.  It’s short and worth the read.

Chesapeake is by far and away the largest producer in the Utica Shale at 1 million acres, 146,000 BOE of production per day, and having drilled 588 new wells in 2015.  Check out the chart in this article.

It’s August 18, 2016 and oil prices continue to rise based on mere speculation that OPEC and Russia will freeze oil production.  I’ll believe that when I see it.  Gas prices are on the rise because of lower than expected storage numbers.  That makes sense.  Oil prices on the rise because OPEC is talking, yet again, about freezing production doesn’t.

This article from Seeking Alpha suggests that $50/bbl oil is here to stay.  It gives three reasons, one of which is that investors are very willing to invest in oil and gas companies still.  That is one thing that I had been wondering about.  If investors had not been willing to do so, we could have seen serious decreases in production in the near future.  Since they’re willing to, we’re a lot less likely to see a serious decrease in production and a corresponding increase in oil and gas prices.  While the article is written with oil in mind, you could easily replace the numbers for oil with numbers for gas and get the same story.

Another article from Seeking Alpha (sometimes they’ve got a lot of great stuff) is predicting that gas prices are going to continue to move higher.  If you like to read stuff from a commodity trader’s point of view, this is an article for you.

Today is September 1, 2016.  Oil prices are still hovering around $45/bbl, and gas prices are still hovering around $2.75/MCF.  We’ve seen a significant increase in the number of inquiries from potential clients who’ve been offered oil and gas leases lately.  The most interesting was an Antero Resources lease in Monongalia County.  Northeast Natural Energy has been working in Monongalia County for about a year, in the same area that Antero is working.  If NNE is interested in making some money by flipping their leases, they timed it just right.  This is good news for anybody who signed leases with NNE, because another company showing interest in the same area means that there’s good potential for production there.  We hope you Monongalia County, WV mineral rights owners get great royalty checks in the very near future!

OPEC will be meeting this month to announce that they have not reached a deal to freeze production.  Oil prices will fall when that news is announced.  Saudi princes selling oil prices short will make a bundle.  If I knew enough about trading commodities, I would make a bundle, too.  Actually, I probably wouldn’t because everybody else with half a brain will be selling short at the same time.  Or maybe I just showed my lack of knowledge about how trading commodities works?  It doesn’t matter, I do West Virginia oil and gas law.

This article has as its thesis that OPEC no longer has the power to control oil and gas prices.  I agree.  The article is interesting because it discusses the current state of the oil and gas industry, much the way this blog post does.  It’s worth a few minutes to read.

It’s September 15, 2015 and the price of gas is at $2.91/MCF and the price of oil is $43.70/bbl.  Prices have been relatively stable lately.  Drilling seems to be picking up just a little bit nationwide as the rig count has gone up a bit.  Leasing has definitely picked up in West Virginia.  We’ve picked up several new lease negotiation clients this week.  While interest in leasing up property in the northern panhandle is picking up, it also seems to be picking up in the old core, consisting of Ritchie, Tyler, Doddridge, and Harrison counties.  We’ve also run across a lease from Antero Resources in Monongalia County, which is a new interest for them.  Previously, Northeast Natural Energy and EQT were the only companies working in that county.

We’re looking forward to seeing what happens with the OPEC meeting in Algeria on September 26-28.  We fully expect them to announce that they will not be curtailing or freezing production.  We also fully expect lots of people to speculate that they will.  It would be great for American producers if they did, as that would drive prices up and give American producers an opportunity to start drilling again.