Natural gas prices are at $3.73, down from a high of $4.10, but up from a low of $3.04. This is a pretty healthy price range for natural gas.

Gas storage is at 2,297 Bcf, a little below the five-year average.

Rig count is at 588, having hit a low of 576 during the last month.

Salt time! Bernstein is suggesting that we’re in a supercycle (long-term trend) that will see natural gas prices at $5/MMBtu through 2026. Also, the EIA is predicting that the U.S. will continue to export more natural gas through 2026.

RBNEnergy does a quick look a the financials for a number of natural gas producers.

Hope Gas had intended to switch customers who were served by very old natural gas pipelines to propane or electric. They are now intending to sell those pipelines to Diversified.

RBNEnergy’s beginning of the year prognostication is available, and interesting.

President Trump has issued a number of executive orders that encourage federal administrators to encourage oil and gas exploration and production. The industry is ecstatic.

And just like that, the LNG pause is over. Exporters are ecstatic.

Here’s a good article about the oil and gas industry in West Virginia, including some history, a look at the status quo, and why there is hope for the future.

President Trump has made Mark Christie the chairman of the FERC. Christie was already a member of the commission, and will probably fast track some policies that will make it easier to build natural gas infrastructure. It’s interesting that the new president would make this move so quickly. The FERC doesn’t usually get immediate attention from a new administration.

West Virginia has been granted primacy by the Feds for carbon sequestration wells. That means the State can approve permits without involving the Feds. That will speed the process up a lot.

RBNEnergy has some initial analysis of the Trump Administration’s executive orders relating to energy.

The Trump Administration sounds like it’s dedicated to increasing energy production in the U.S.

An H.G. Energy well in Jane Lew, West Virginia, caught fire. Thankfully, no one was injured and it seems the fire was put out in a few hours.

Diversified Energy is buying Maverick Natural Resources for $1.3 billion. This move will expand Diversified’s footprint in the Permian Basin.

The U.S. wants oil prices to be low, and the Saudi’s want oil prices to be high. This has led to several price wars, and may be leading to another.

CNX has bought Apex Energy, adding acreage to CNX’s Pennsylvania holdings.

“Drill, baby, drill” is probably actually going to be “build, baby, build“.

The Interior Department is reviewing regulations to comply with the Trump Administration’s executive orders. However, it’s unlikely that their changes are going to lead to significantly more drilling and consequently lower prices, as oil and gas companies are currently incentivized to be profitable. This is the same reason why “drill, baby, drill” is not going to happen.

The Department of Energy has issued a statement outlining the Department’s goals, which are going to ignore net-zero policies and emphasize production and transmission of energy.

The EPA has issued a similar statement with some similar goals.

Here’s an article written by GO-WV that outlines some of the financial benefits of the oil and gas industry to West Virginia.

One of the reasons pipelines had such a hard time getting built in West Virginia and Pennsylvania was because they came in expecting to ram agreements down people’s throats and railroad them into signing them. If they’d just approached people with that old “win-win” attitude, they could have gotten things built a lot quicker. maybe even before environmentalists got well enough organized to really slow down the process. Case in point, a PA judge has ruled that Sunoco didn’t have eminent domain when it was telling people it did, and of course using that as leverage to get them to sign agreements.

The first plant that will produce lithium from frack water will go operational sometime in March or April of this year (2025) up in Northeast PA.

Geothermal could really become an industry in the next few years, apparently.