There was a public hearing about the natural gas fired power plant that is proposed for Harrison County, WV. The projected operation date is sometime in July, 2020. This would be a good thing for West Virginia royalty owners, and West Virginians as a whole. Instead of shipping all our gas out of state as a raw material, we can add value here and then ship it out at a higher price.
South Jersey residents will see a reduction in their power bills, in part because of the low cost of Marcellus Shale gas.
The Wall Street Journal is saying that natural gas is finally a global market. I don’t agree that’s true quite yet, but I think we’re awfully close.
The U.S. is the worlds top producer of petroleum and natural gas, and has been for five years straight.
Mexico is buying up a lot of U.S. natural gas. Exports to Mexico have quadrupled in recent years.
Volvo is making a push towards building more electric vehicles. All new models from 2019 on will be either full electric or hybrid.
Shale drillers in Pennsylvania have drilled twice as many wells in the first half of this year as they did in the first half of last year.
Saudi Arabia is warning that there’s not enough investment in oil drilling, and that in the next five years we’re going to see a serious drop in production. Seems that would be in their best interest, and American shale producers should be licking their chops if that’s really the case.
The cracker plant in Ohio is coming a little closer to reality. A final decision has not been made, but PTT Global Chemical announced the purchase of land for about $130 million.
Rig counts in the Marcellus-Utica region remain steady after a slow but steady increase in the last few months.
Watching how the oil and gas supply industry is going is a pretty good way of knowing how the oil and gas industry is going. Recently, suppliers of frac sand have taken a hit by investors, meaning there’s not confidence that demand for frac sand will grow. That said, demand is up considerably year over year already, so the industry isn’t doing poorly.
China’s national gas developer plans to double natural gas production in the next three years.
The Trump administration has appointed some new commissioners for the FERC, but they have not been approved. The CEOs of some major pipeline companies are saying that if they aren’t approved by August the investment money for those projects may disappear.
Now that Nigeria and Libya are back to producing large amounts of oil, OPEC is going to force them to curtail their production.
President Trump stumped in Europe for U.S. natural gas.
CNN Money doesn’t think gas powered cars are going away any time soon, in spite of Volvo’s move to electric.
France won’t be developing oil and gas any more. American fracking companies are happy.
Investors are hesitant to throw more money at the oil and gas industry right now. That’s good for the time being. We don’t need more development at the moment. More investment will be needed when prices start to climb towards $4.00/MMBtu. That may be a while.
July 17, and gas prices have moved a lot in the last month but they’re back at about $3.00/MMBtu. Oil prices are at $46/bbl, but have been moving around a lot as well.
Currently, it seems that energy prices are going to be relatively stable for some time. Natural gas production is about right to put us at about the right amount of gas storage before winter, so we’ll see the usual bump in price this winter. Oil prices could nosedive if OPEC decided to open the spigots but they appear to be committed to keeping prices up until at least the IPO for Saudi Aramco, and American fracking is not yet producing enough oil to drive prices down.