Rocky Mountain Area Natural Gas Daily Price Review

Brian Jeffries

The charts below depict the daily cash price for natural gas at Opal and the Cheyenne Hub for each day in August 2024. Also shown are prices at some key locations downstream from Wyoming going to the west and going to the midcontinent region, and the price for Waha, TX which represents the Permian Basin.

Because spot prices in the Permian Basin are so far below prices in the Rockies, there are four versions of the typical monthly price charts. This was done to provide charts with and without Permian Basin prices represented in the charts. The wide difference between Permian Basin prices and the other depicted prices compresses the y-axis when Permian Basin prices appear on the same chart as Rockies Prices. That compression makes it harder to see differences between points in the Rockies.

The negative spot prices in the Permian are indeed astounding. Imagine having gas for which you have no firm transportation capacity of your own to move the gas out of the Permian and being forced to pay as much as $6.23 per MMBtu to your “buyer” to have that gas taken away.

Representative pricing for baseload gas at points on the grid (US$/MMBtu) - September 2024