EIA: 2019 Natural Gas Prices Lowest in 3 Years
The researchers at the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) have done a deep dive into natural gas prices from 2019 and found the average spot price at the Henry Hub last year was $2.57 per thousand cubic feet (Mcf), down about 60 cents from 2018’s average price. Ouch. The researchers tease out the factors that influenced prices last year, pushing it higher (in some cases) and lower (in others). It is useful analysis, giving us a window into what may happen this year.
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Ever hear of something called the oil-to-gas price ratio? It’s a simple concept. You take the price at which oil is trading per barrel, and compare it to the price of natural gas trading per MMBtu (million BTUs). What can that ratio tell us about the natural gas market in general, and the Marcellus/Utica gas market in particular?
At the end of last year/beginning of this year we noticed several articles predicting what will happen with natural gas drilling in 2020. The upshot from the experts and prognosticators quoted is that drillers will “tap the breaks” and natural gas production will, at a minimum, stay flat through 2020. Perhaps even fall a bit.
Once upon a time in BSE (before shale era) if you were to chart the price of oil and the price of natural gas together on the same graph, the path/track was almost identical. When the price of oil went up (or down), so too did the price of gas. With the advent of shale in 2008/2009, tracking between the two has changed. It’s gone. The value of natural gas compared to the value of oil is now *much lower* than it was in BSE.
We often spot stories in the press about the price of natural gas for end-user customers going down. A utility here and a utility there will announce a rate reduction. Most of the time we don’t bring you those kinds of stories because they’re pretty common. However, we spotted a story that’s different. The Public Service Commission in West Virginia says natural gas utility companies that serve 91% of the gas customers in the state have filed requests to LOWER the rates they charge for their gas–thanks to abundant supplies of Marcellus Shale gas being extracted in the state.
While on the surface the liquefied natural gas (LNG) marketplace may seem simple and straightforward, when you dig down you’ll find it is complex. There are different kinds of contracts between those who sell the gas, those who liquefy and ship it, and those who buy it. The LNG marketplace is, with the entrance of the U.S., changing rapidly. Our friends at RBN Energy recently posted an explanation for how it all works.
The CME Group, formerly known as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, is a global derivatives marketplace based in Chicago–originally founded to sell physical commodities like grain and eggs. These days CME Group offers a range of financial trading products across all major asset classes, including those based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, energy, agricultural products and metals. CME Group is in the process of launching the world’s first-ever physically-delivered LNG contract. What is that and how does that affect our region?
For years MDN has observed that Cabot Oil & Gas is one of the few Marcellus/Utica drilling companies that can “spin straw into gold”–meaning it makes money on selling natural gas even when the price of that gas is in the basement (see 
No doubt you’ve noticed the price of natural gas has been relatively low over the past few weeks, dropping from around $2.40 per thousand cubic feet (Mcf) a month ago to now flirting with $2/Mcf. The last time gas prices went below $2/Mcf was in 2016. One of the reasons, believe it or not, that the price has fallen dramatically over the past few days is because of a single LNG export facility–Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass facility (which exports some M-U gas).
The pipeline situation today in the Marcellus/Utica region is far different than it was just a year or two ago. Not long ago lack of pipelines meant we had an overabundance of natural gas in the region without buyers, driving prices into the basement. Today? It’s all different. Because of new and expanded pipelines coming online over the past couple of years, producers (i.e. drillers) today have options on where to send their natural gas–fetching far better prices in new markets. In fact, according to the analysts at RBN Energy, “The spate of pipeline expansions and additions in the past two years have not only caught up to production but capacity now far outpaces it.” That’s a big switcheroo.
The Natural Gas Supply Association (NGSA) yesterday released its 2019 Summer Outlook for Natural Gas report (summary below). It’s not much different than the Winter Outlook was (see