#natgas market can get lost in the weeds at times. Right now seems like one of those times. L48 NG production has never had a larger capacity to decline...
NG Shale Production, which declines much more precipitously than conventional NG production, has never been larger on a nominal (~81 Bcf/d) or percentage of total basis (~80%)
Said another way, L48 NG production's base decline rates have never been higher with 15-18 Bcf/d of production having to be replaced each year by new wells.
Under business as usual this wouldn't be much of an issue. But the inventory of Drilled but Uncompleted wells has been cut nearly in half since their peak early in Covid to about the lowest level they've been at since EIA began tracking them.
Furthermore a non-immaterial amount of the DUCs remaining are wells that are years old and are unlikely to ever be frac'd for various reasons.
That leaves it up to drillers to replace production, but producers have finally responded to low NG prices and have sent 15% of their gas rig fleet back to the yards to gather dust. And even at the elevated level gas rigs were running at, production was just treading water...
Lastly, the L48 is further hampered to stave off production declines as it's largest producing basin (Appalachia) is incapable of increasing production due to an inability to (perhaps ever) build a new pipeline out of the region...
S&D might look loose right now but when production declines begin to show up in the next 2-3 months it'll look a lot better and the folks selling the Winter strip will realize they missed the forest for the trees trying to capture the last dime or nickel of downside...
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