RBN Energy

The CME/NYMEX Henry Hub prompt natural gas futures prices have been relatively rangebound this injection season and have averaged around $2.60/MMBtu since June — a third or less of where prices stood during the same period last year, in the $7-$9/MMBtu range, and at or below most natural gas producers’ breakeven costs. Yet, this is a much rosier scenario than it could have been considering that the first quarter of 2023 was one of the most bearish in over a decade and led to a massive storage surplus vs. last year that persisted through much of the summer. Since setting the year-to-date monthly average low of $2.19/MMBtu in April, prompt futures rose to an average of nearly $2.50/MMBtu in June, ~$2.65/MMBtu in July and August, and have mostly stayed in the $2.50-$2.75 range in September to date. In today’s RBN blog, we break down the factors that kept prices from unraveling this injection season to date and the implications for the rest of the shoulder season. 

After being relegated to the back burner during the shale boom, the natural gas storage market is showing signs of a comeback. Market participants are clamoring for storage solutions, storage values are rising, and storage deals and expansions are bubbling up. However, that won’t necessarily lead to a widespread build-out of new storage capacity like the one that transpired in the pre-shale storage heyday of the mid-to-late 2000s. That’s because the world has changed, and what’s driving storage values today is vastly different than what drove the last big capacity build-out. In today’s RBN blog, we look at the emerging developments in the storage market, what’s driving them, and the implications for Lower 48 storage capacity.

Permian producers are churning out ever-increasing volumes of associated gas, all of which needs to find a home. New or expanded takeaway pipelines to Gulf Coast markets are an obvious option — and a few projects are in the works — but locking in capacity requires long-term commitments that many producers are loathe to make. As a result, the balance between Permian takeaway capacity and the volumes of gas that need to exit the basin is always on a knife’s edge, often resulting in a Waha basis so ugly that producers are essentially giving their gas away. But what if there was a way to put more Permian gas to good, economic use within the basin, and ideally very close to where it’s produced? Better yet, what if the producers could garner some environmental cred in the process? In today’s RBN blog, we discuss a trio of Permian projects — a couple of them involving top-tier E&Ps — that would use local gas to make gasoline, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and electricity.

In the last 12 months, U.S. natural gas prices have touched highs not seen since the start of the Shale Revolution as well as depths previously plumbed only briefly during downturns in 2012, 2016 and 2020. Where will prices go next? Well, if we knew that, we wouldn’t be writing blogs. As we’ve seen in the past couple of years, there’s just too much going on in global markets to think you can know where gas prices will be 10 years, five years or even one year from now. But that never stopped us from trying. As we’ve done many times before, we’ll take a scenario approach — a high case and a low case. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll explore these scenarios for domestic natural gas prices and what sort of ramifications each would entail for other markets.