Rocky Mountain Area Natural Gas Daily Price Review – December 2024 and full year 2024

Brian Jeffries

The charts below depict the daily cash price for natural gas at Opal and at the Cheyenne Hub for each day in December 2024. Also shown are prices at some key locations downstream from Wyoming going to the west and to the Midcontinent region, as well as 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. 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 price difference between the Rockies and the Permian Basin (Waha), though still significant, narrowed during December as additional pipeline capacity out of the Permian Basin came online and reduced the amount of pain in the Permian due to a lack of capacity.

The next chart in the series shows the daily and monthly reference prices at Opal for the calendar year. In 2024, the difference in the average of the two reference prices, applied on a daily basis for the year, was $0.46 per MMBtu in favor of selling all gas at the monthly price (Monthly = $2.46, Daily = $2.00). The month of February was the key driver behind this outcome.

The final chart depicts the difference between the monthly and daily prices at the Opal and Cheyenne Hubs. For the monthly reference price, Opal beat Cheyenne by $0.49 per MMBtu over the year. For the daily reference price, Opal beat Cheyenne by $0.30 over the year. Pipeline capacity expansions that add capability to move gas from the Cheyenne Hub to the Opal hub will likely reduce the future difference in the prices between those hubs.

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