Chapters

Storage, basis fragmentation, captive infrastructure, demand seasonality, end-use lock-in, methane emissions, and the market structure consequences that follow.

Manufactured gas in 1816, Hart's 1821 well in Fredonia, the first long-distance pipelines, the 1938 Natural Gas Act, Phillips v. Wisconsin and the wellhead price-control era, FERC Order 636, the NYMEX Henry Hub launch, the shale revolution, and the LNG export pivot.

Producers, oilfield services, gas processors, pipeline operators and the MLP era, storage operators, LNG operators, marketers and schedulers, banks, hedge funds and specialist traders, trading houses, exchanges and price reporting agencies, regulators, and industry associations.

Conventional vs unconventional gas, source rock vs reservoir, and a basin-by-basin tour of Marcellus, Permian, Haynesville, Anadarko, Bakken, Eagle Ford, Niobrara, and Montney.

Methane chemistry, NGLs, heating value units, the Wobbe Index, pipeline-quality specs, odorization, LNG feed gas requirements, and custody-transfer measurement.

Modern rig technology, the evolution of horizontal drilling, and the geophysics that finds gas before the bit hits the rock.

The mechanics of slickwater completions: stages, proppant, water management, and the engineering that turned shale source rock into the largest gas play on earth.

Decline curves, parent-child interference, associated gas from oil wells, and the unit economics of a shale gas well from spud to abandonment.

Removing impurities, separating NGLs, the cryogenic plant, the amine sweetener, the dehydrator, and the path from wellhead to interstate pipeline tap.

The physics of moving gas across a continental grid, compressor station hydraulics, and the FERC regulatory frame that governs interstate transit.

Salt caverns, depleted reservoirs, LNG peak shavers, working gas vs base gas, and the seasonal cycle of injections and withdrawals.

Combined cycle gas turbines, the spark spread, gas as the marginal generator, AI data center demand, and the relationship between gas prices and the electrical grid.

Petrochemical feedstock, fertilizer manufacture, residential heating, the heating degree day, and the appliance fleet that locks gas demand into the building stock.

Liquefaction technology, mega-trains, the cryogenic fleet, regasification, and the shift from a landlocked North American market to a global commodity linked through ocean-going cargoes.

Henry Hub as the benchmark, the basis-point archipelago of US pipeline pricing, and the spreads that carry most of the information in the gas market.

Firm vs interruptible transportation, the secondary market for pipeline capacity, capacity release, and the contractual layer that sits over the physical pipe.

FERC, state utility commissions, methane emissions standards, EPA OOOOb/c, the EU import standard, and the regulatory architecture that prices methane intensity.

The NGL value chain from gas plant tap through Mont Belvieu fractionation, salt-cavern storage, NGL pipelines, export terminals at Morgan’s Point and Marcus Hook, and the petrochemical, residential, and gasoline-blending demand stack.

OPIS Mont Belvieu daily assessments, ICE swaps and options, the frac spread and its components, crude-diff pricing in percent of WTI, polymer-grade ethylene, LPG arbitrage to Asia and Europe, and the hedging structures that sit on top.

Heating and cooling degree days, hurricanes, freeze-offs, crop drying, storage injection and withdrawal cycles, pipeline maintenance windows, the LNG cargo calendar, and how the same molecule prices differently in January and July.

Coal-to-gas dispatch switching at the spark spread, ethane-versus-naphtha at flex-feed steam crackers, propane-versus-heating-oil residential, and the cross-commodity arbitrage that ties gas to power, petrochemicals, and the global oil barrel.