US NatGas on Track for Record Low Demand in January
U.S. natural gas demand is on track to hit record lows in January if unseasonably warm weather sticks around, according to Rystad Energy. It’s just too darned warm! The warm weather reduces demand for natgas used in heating. Also, as you will read today, a Freeport LNG restart that uses 2 Bcf/d is also likely delayed further–maybe until the end of February. Given the warm weather and Freeport, demand is down, and because of lower demand, prices are crumbling.
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The Upper Delaware Council (UDC) hosted a public presentation titled “Water Resource and Environmental Considerations with Shale Gas Development in the Appalachian Basin” last week at the Upper Delaware Council office in Narrowsburg, NY. The program was delivered virtually by Dr. David Yoxtheimer, Ph.D., P.G., assistant research professor and Extension associate with the Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research at Penn State University. Yoxtheimer did a great job of laying out the facts of Marcellus drilling–both the good and the not-so-good, with an eye on how to mitigate the risks.
Three different highly-placed sources have whispered to a Reuters reporter that the Freeport LNG export facility, which has been offline since last June, will continue to be offline until at least sometime in February. Are you surprised? We aren’t.
Gov. Kathy Hochul is proposing to make New York the first state in the U.S. to ban natural gas heating and appliances in new buildings as a way to fight mythical man-made global warming. During her state-of-the-state address on Tuesday, Hochul proposed to ban the use of fossil fuels for heating and appliances (stoves) in homes by 2025, and a ban for businesses and larger structures (like apartment buildings) by 2028. New York would also prohibit the sale of any new fossil-fuel heating systems starting in 2030. Yes, she has certifiably lost her mind.
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West Virginia’s annual 60-day legislative session begins today. Yesterday, in preparation for the new session, the state’s Revenue Secretary, Dave Hardy, and Deputy Secretary, Mark Muchow, gave a report on the state’s finances to the Joint Committee on Finance. Hardy said state surpluses from taxes (particularly the severance tax) are “eye-popping and they’re historic numbers.” The high price of natural gas has led to record severance tax collections in the Mountain State. Halfway through the fiscal year, severance tax collections are up 113%. State revenue is up 21% year-to-date because of high severance tax collections. But, will the severance tax gravy train continue?
In a modern twist on an old story, the little town of Bethlehem (this one in Pennsylvania) provided a savior this past Christmas–in the form of a natural gas-fired power plant. The Bethlehem Energy Center, owned by Calpine, received permission (indeed, strong encouragement) from the U.S. Dept of Energy (at the request of the PJM grid operator) to “ramp up production” of electricity while other gas-fired power plants that are part of the PJM system began to fail due to the super-cold weather. Bethlehem powered up, keeping the lights (and heat) on Christmas Eve. Otherwise, Pennsylvanians living in the Lehigh Valley would have frozen their derrieres off. Marcellus gas as savior. Has a ring to it, eh?
Once a month, the analysts at the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) issue the agency’s Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), their best guess about where energy prices and production will go in the next 12 months or so. We sometimes poke some good-natured fun at the EIA because one month, their predictions go up, the next month, down, etc. What about the latest STEO dart board, published yesterday? EIA predicts average natural gas production will be 100.34 Bcf/d in 2023 and will go even higher to 102.29 Bcf/d in 2024. The current all-time high was 98.02 Bcf/d, and that was last year. As for the commodity price of gas, EIA says the Henry Hub spot price will average $4.90/MMBtu in 2023, down from $6.42/MMBtu in 2022.
The Better Path Coalition is a mish-mash of the some of the most radical leftwing “environmental” groups in Pennsylvania, including THE Delaware Riverkeeper, 350 Philadelphia, EcoJustice Working Group, Freshwater Accountability Project, and many more. Some of their members are not beyond committing crimes in the name of supposedly saving the planet (see 
Residents living in the vicinity of Energy Transfer’s Revolution Pipeline cryogenic plant in Bulger (Washington County), PA, got a nasty “present” on Christmas morning. Around 7:30 am, residents report hearing an explosion, followed by a fire, at the plant used to separate NGLs (natural gas liquids, including ethane, propane, and butane) from the raw gas stream that flows through the Revolution gathering pipeline (see 
Natural gas stoves are used in roughly 40% of households in the United States. The hard-left Bidenistas who control the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission are floating a trial balloon that they want to ban them all, forcing you (if you have one) to replace it with an electric stove. The stated reason for forcing a change is that gas stoves supposedly emit cancer-causing, and asthma-causing, chemicals. The Bidenistas are attempting to use fear as a weapon to convince people to go along with this tyranny. Don’t let them.