What a Difference a Year Makes

What a Difference a Year Makes Last September, our COO, Jim McDonnell, was the lead-off speaker for the first session of the Maryland Clean Energy Center’s Energy Economy Speaker Series. The topic was State of the Sector: Impacts of Covid-19 on the Energy Economy. Jim provided a broad energy market update and then focused on…

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Welcome Back to 1976

By Evelyn Teel and Jim McDonnell Our last blog post discussed the trend of decreasing natural gas prices in the 2010s (please find that blog post at this link: https://avalonenergy.us/2020/01/down-down-down-energy-prices-in-the-2010s/). What does the trend in natural gas prices look like if we go further back in time?  To answer this question, we extended our look-back…

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Down, Down, Down: Energy Prices in the 2010s

By Evelyn Teel A previous blog post highlighted the shale gas revolution as arguably the most significant energy-related development of the previous decade (you can find the post here: https://avalonenergy.us/2019/12/shale-we-review-the-2010s/). In this article, we will discuss another trend that was significant in the 2010s – declining energy prices. Natural Gas Prices  One major effect of…

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Natural Gas Market Update, June 2018

Natural gas prices remain low and below their declining 21-year trend. See graph below. The prices presented here are for delivery at the Henry Hub in Southern Louisiana. Natural gas prices in other producing areas of the US, such as Northeastern Pennsylvania, the Permian Basin, and the Williston Basin, are significantly lower. The prices here…

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Separate Paths – Part 2

By Ana Rasmussen, Intern Our last blog post Separate Paths – Part 1looked at how electricity distribution costs have been rising since 2008 and many of our readers have had questions about just why this is happening. In order to explore this, and to try to get some answers, I dove in and analyzed seven…

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Separate Paths – Part 1

By Ana Rasmussen, Intern Since the shale boom began in earnest during 2008, natural gas prices in the US wholesale market have fallen dramatically. Prices have hovered within the 2 to 6 dollar per million Btu (mmBtu) range over the last few years, with the prompt month NYMEX natural gas contract trading at a remarkably…

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10,000 Maniacs Were Right

The dramatic decline of natural gas prices was the focus of our last article (These Are Days to Remember). As we noted then, in real dollars, natural gas prices were near all-time lows. Since then, natural gas prices have continued to fall. Yesterday the November futures contract settled at $2.033 per mmBtu. The last time…

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Natural Gas Market Update

Over the past 12 months, natural gas prices have fallen 52%. Looking ahead, the graphs below each look at natural gas prices in the futures market starting at two different points in time: June 24, 2014 and January 5, 2015. The first graph extends two years into the future and the second graph five years.…

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Are Crude Oil and Natural Gas Reconciling?

Crude oil prices have dropped 38% since June for two reasons. Shale oil production in the US Bakken, Eagle Ford, and Permian basins has increased dramatically – by more than 4 million barrels per day since 2008. At the same time, worldwide demand for crude oil has declined as a result of slowing economies in…

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Real Electricity Prices (Energy Prices Always Go Up, Part 5)

This article is part of an occasional series that examines the common perception that energy prices always go up. We have examined both electricity prices (read hereand here) and natural gas prices (read hereand here). An article published recently by CNSNews.com states that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), “The price of electricity…

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