Cheap Natural Gas Is A Thing Of The Past

OilPrice.com ^ | August 9, 2021 | Alex Kimani

[BlackAdderess]

The era of cheap natural gas might be gone for good. U.S. natural gas futures climbed to a 31-month high of 4.16/MMBtu on Thursday thanks to forecasts for hotter weather over the next two weeks and soaring global gas prices ensuring that U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports will remain at record highs.…

(Snip) The United States has a long-running love affair with natural gas, with fossil fuels acting as the lynchpin in the country's power generation mix, while nearly half of American homes use the fuel for heating. With the transition from fossil fuels to renewables in full swing in many states, natural gas serves as the bridge that will make the switch smoother and less jarring.

[BlackAdderess]

Hope everyone is getting their ducks in a row with winterizing and stocking up on consumables.

[TexasFreeper2009]

lol we have so much gas they burn it off to get rid of it. Go to west Texas at night and you will see the flames rising into the air.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Ain’t the Green New Deal grand?

[BlackAdderess]

It doesn’t automatically follow that our prices won’t go up this winter if Asian demand surges.

[BlackAdderess]

Yup. If the narrative stays on masks Democrats win, if the narrative turns to inflation and home heating cost increases, the GOP wins.

[nagant]

Why should our federal government allow export quantities of our natural gas to be high enough to force domestic prices up to foreign price levels?

[Leep]

Shhh..we have to pretend we are running out. so we can return to the leftard’s glory days of “peak oil” and energy dependence.

[BlackAdderess]

These are businesses, they go for the highest prices people are willing to pay

[redgolum]

$4.16, is cheap.

I remember when it was $8.

[Tell It Right]

Agree with this post. Natural gas is currently up 80% from this time last year. (See https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/commodities/ng%3anmx, choose the 1Y graph, move cursor over far left of graph to 8/13/2020, you'll see that it was $2.182 and is currently $3.933).

This is one of the reasons I put a large solar system onto my house and I'm taking bids on replacing my two gas appliances with electric ones. I can't stand the Dims' push to force states and utilities to be "all green" -- that means all green for their cronies but more red to consumers for less reliable energy. But I live in a place that gets lots of sunshine and I installed a solar system customized for my specific power consumption (not a one-size-fits-all model like the Dims push).

I currently produce over 70% of all the power I consume. So at least with electricity, I'm mostly removed from the effects of Obama's and Biden's push to force my power company to switch some of their coal production to natural gas, then Biden banning some fracking and jacking up the cost of natural gas (which jacks up my power rate). After I convert my gas appliances to electric, shut off my gas service, and study my electricity usage for a year or so, I may decide to upgrade my solar capability. I don't think I'll ever be 100% solar: when you get to 70% independent any increase above that means a high cost for little return on investment. But after my current system has paid for itself in about 12 years (sooner if the Dims keep jacking up energy costs), anything I save above that I'll put to upgrading my system.

[Obadiah]

Yes, you are correct, however, not that long ago NG was stable at about $3.05 to $3.15.

[cgbg]

The left loves it when automobiles are sitting in mile long gas lines and polluting the environment.

Watch what they do, ignore what they say.

The issue is not the issue, the revolution is not the issue.

PSA--Don't forget to report to our local Mengele Institute Satellite Office (#666) to assist our glorious scientists in their patriotic medical experiments.

[glorgau]

> and study my electricity usage for a year or so See Sense.com. I remember having a chat with some of the engineers at a meetup. It's a very "intelligent" product.

[Tell It Right]

Fracking is everything to nat gas price. That controls supply. Inventing fracking and allowing it prosper raised supply and bigly reduced cost. Ban fracking (as Biden is starting to do with his limiting of new fracking leases) and nat gas goes up.

Probably the #2 factor in nat gas price is how government policy impacts demand. Forcing power companies to close the "dirtiest" coal plants and switch to nat gas power plants increases demand bigly. which increases price.

[Rurudyne]

It has taken the so-called “progressives” (Quisling America Last Surrender Monkeys) a lot of effort to reach this point.

[Bubba_Leroy]

lol we have so much gas they burn it off to get rid of it.

Natural gas is a byproduct of oil production. It is cheaper to burn it at the wellhead than it is to try and collect it to sell. If natural gas prices increase, then it will be economical to collect more of it. We have a tremendous amount of known gas reserves that are just not economical to produce at current prices.

[BlackAdderess]

70% is amazing, I’m jealous!

[BlackAdderess]

With many inadvertant assists from the GOP!

[rlmorel]

"...we have to pretend we are running out. so we can return to the leftard’s glory days of “peak oil” and energy dependence..."

Oddly enough, I have seen people on this very forum who appear to support that.

[Tell It Right]

Thanks, but I don't need the sense.com product. My solar inverter gives me tons of telemetry. It tells me that my solar system is currently producing 7.5 kW from the sun, my home is using up 314 watts (0.3 kW) (because my A/C isn't running right now), and the excess is charging my home batteries which are currently at 59% capacity. And I can download much more detail in an Excel spreadsheet recorded at 5 minute intervals. From there I import it into a custom made database (I do that kind of stuff for a living) and I can crunch the numbers even further.

For instance, 40% of all days my batteries are fully charged at some point in the day. That means there's excess solar power not being used almost half the time. Maybe after I switch my gas appliances to electric I'll use up a lot of that excess power and won't gain from improving my solar system. Or maybe I'll have many times of the day where so many appliances on at the same time exceed my inverter's capacity to meet the demand (in which case it pulls power from my grid). So I'd buy another inverter. Or maybe I don't have many appliances on simultaneously, but their cumulative effect drains the batteries from full to empty too many times (in which case I'll buy another battery or two).

In the end I'll have no natural gas bill and still have maybe 70% of my power supplied by my solar system so that it'll pay for itself in about 12 years, all while giving me a bit of an insurance policy against political upheaval on energy costs as I soon head into retirement.