An Increase In Both Natural Gas Prices And Production

• Scott Detrow
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.
  
  Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.
  
  Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

Two statistical snapshots for you – one marginal, the other substantial:
Natural gas production in the lower 48 states ticked up by 0.7 percent in May, compared to April. The federal Energy Information Administration attributed the slight increase to “new wells being brought online in the Marcellus shale play and gains in Colorado. Oklahoma also had a gain of 0.09 Bcf/d, or 1.7%, as new wells were brought online.”
But natural gas prices have increased by 69 percent, since the commodity hit a ten-year low earlier this year. That’s mostly due to increased electricity demand created by hot summer weather. More from the AP:

The price jumped another 6.6 percent Monday after forecasters predicted an especially toasty August, with unseasonably warm temperatures throughout the Midwest. Natural gas ended the day at $3.214 per 1,000 cubic feet, a high for the year.
“As long as we see strong cooling demand, prices are going to go higher,” said Gene McGillian, a broker and analyst at Tradition Energy.

 

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