Henry Hub NatGas Price Moves Higher on Weather, Supply
The Henry Hub price of natural gas (even physically traded spot prices around the country) are ever-so-gradually moving higher. Yes, we’re cheerleaders for higher natgas prices! (Not too high, but certainly higher than the current $2-$3 range.) Even though we’re pro-gas and cheerleaders for higher prices (we openly admit our bias), we’re also realists, and we try to bring you the unvarnished truth. Are prices really moving higher? Or is this just another short-term up/down cycle?
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NGLs, or natural gas liquids, are an essential revenue stream for Marcellus/Utica drillers in the “wet gas” regions of the play. Those regions are found in southwestern Pennsylvania, the northern panhandle of West Virginia, and eastern Ohio. There are several pipelines that flow M-U NGLs to other regions or to export facilities. Among them is Enterprise Products Partners’ 1,230-mile Appalachia to Texas Express (ATEX) pipeline to the Gulf Coast, and Kinder Morgan’s 270-mile Utica-to-Ontario-Pipeline-Access (UTOPIA) pipeline from Harrison County, Ohio, to Windsor in Canada’s Ontario province. However, most M-U NGLs travel through Energy Transfer’s Mariner East and West pipelines, with Mariner East flowing to the Marcus Hook export terminal near Philadelphia.
Gas-fired power plant additions have surged in 2023 according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) most recent infrastructure report (full copy below). Nearly 4,470 megawatts (MW) of natural gas-fired electric generation came online in the first four months this year, up from 551 MW in the same period in 2022. Utility-scale solar capacity increased by 3,409 MW through April of this year, up from 3,064 MW in the year-ago period. New wind capacity fell to 1,967 MW from 5,161 MW in the same period last year. Contrary to the constant meme that “renewables” like solar and wind are replacing natural gas for electric generation, the facts say otherwise.
Other than not using the term ESG (environment, social, governance), Larry Fink, the CEO of the world’s largest investment firm, BlackRock, hasn’t changed. He intends to keep pushing ESG without calling it that. Fink tells the companies that BlackRock invests in to lower carbon emissions (i.e., stop using fossil energy, and stop making loans to fossil energy companies). He is completely unrepentant, even though state after state is dropping his company’s services.
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Cheniere and ENN sign LNG sale and purchase agreement; NATIONAL: Biden proposes to cut project fees for wind and solar by 80%; Electric vehicles make no sense on the battlefield.
On Saturday, June 3, President Biden signed the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) of 2023, also known as the “debt ceiling” bill, into law. Part of the new law is a provision that forces government agencies (on every level) to finish granting any outstanding permits to the long-stalled, 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project. The new law also ripped away the right of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to hear any further cases regarding MVP. All of which means construction should, theoretically, begin by the end of this month (see 
Just two weeks ago, the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) told all water users in the basin that have withdrawal permits, including shale drillers, they should review those permits, and if there are restrictions for withdrawals during low streamflow conditions, they need to make alternative plans (see 
Olympus Energy (formerly Huntley & Huntley) drills in the Greater Pittsburgh region, in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties. In 2021, Olympus applied to build a new well pad in a rural part of Allegheny County, in West Deer Township. So-called “concerned citizens” got amped up to oppose the project. They succeeded when town supervisors rejected the Dionysus well pad (see 
The weekly rig count for the U.S. has continued to be anemic over the past two months. Baker Hughes, with its venerable rig count, reported last Friday that overall, the U.S. rig count continued to bleed rigs–down another five rigs to 682 in the week ending June 23. That’s the lowest count since April 2022 and the eighth week in a row the U.S. has lost active rigs. The good news for the Marcellus/Utica is that both the Marcellus and the Utica maintained the same rig levels last week. It’s good news they didn’t bleed any more rigs!
A month MDN told you about a coming real-life nightmare that the Everett LNG import terminal, which accepts and regasifies foreign natural gas, may shut down following the closure of New England’s biggest natural gas-fired power plant, the Mystic Generating Station in Everett, MA (see 
We have a federal court decision from an interesting case to share. From June 2005 to October 2007, U.S. Energy Development Corporation contracted with Superior Well Services (of Pennsylvania) to frack natural gas wells owned by U.S. Energy in (of all places) New York State. Yes, fracking used to (still does) happen in NY–at least with conventional wells. U.S. Energy filed a claim against Superior in October 2007, saying Superior had damaged 97 of its wells during fracking by using the wrong kind of chemical mixtures in its fracking fluid.
The biggest of the Big Oil companies, including Shell, Chevron, and Exxon Mobil, are making it quite clear that natural gas is here for decades to come. Leftists tried to sell the B.S. line that natural gas is a “short-term bridge to greener energy sources.” When that lie began to fall apart, leftists got agitated and began to sputter nonsense about natgas being a whole lot dirtier than anybody thought. Again, their lies are falling on deaf ears–at least the ears of Big Oil. Unless the left can bully the world’s biggest governments into destroying some of the biggest companies in the world–oil and gas companies–the only opinion that matters is that of the oil companies themselves because they are the ones who will (or will not) do more drilling.
National Fuel Gas Company (NFG) and its pipeline subsidiary Empire Pipeline have worked on a plan to build the Northern Access Pipeline since 2016. Northern Access is a 97-mile project from McKean County in Pennsylvania into and through Allegany, Cattaraugus, and Erie counties in New York that will flow Marcellus gas into New York State. The radicals of the Andrew Cuomo and Kathy Hochul administrations have repeatedly delayed the project. NFG still wants to build it but needs more time. Last July, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) gave NFG an extra 35 months to get the project done–until Dec. 31, 2024 (see