U.S. spot natural gas prices for Tuesday at the Waha Hub in West Texas turned positive for the first time since early February as demand for the fuel rises with the coming of the summer air conditioning season and energy firms start to wrap up spring pipeline maintenance.
Electric companies burn more gas as homes and businesses crank up their air conditioners during the summer. About 40% of U.S. power generation comes from gas-fired plants. Before Tuesday, next-day prices at Waha had remained below zero for a record 90 days in a row as pipeline constraints from spring maintenance trapped gas in the Permian Basin, the nation’s biggest oil-producing basin in West Texas and eastern New Mexico.
Analysts have long said negative prices, which force some energy firms to pay others to take gas associated with their oil production, were a sure sign that the Permian region needs more gas pipes. More pipes are on the way later this year, but not soon enough to handle all the gas currently coming out of the ground. Analysts expect energy firms to boost Permian output as those new pipes enter service and as soaring oil prices from the Iran war encourage producers to pull more oil and the gas associated with that oil production out of the ground. With new pipes entering service, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projects Permian gas output will rise to fresh record highs every month from May to November, reaching 30.1 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) in November. That amount of gas would be enough to supply around a third of all the fuel consumed in the U.S.
One billion cubic feet is enough gas to supply around five million U.S. homes for a day.
NEGATIVE PRICES
Energy firms in the Permian have been willing to take some losses on gas because they can make up for those with profits from selling oil. Negative gas prices were not very common a decade ago when environmental rules were less strict and many drillers could flare or burn off some of their unwanted gas.
But in recent years, that gas has become increasingly valuable as a fuel to generate electricity used by power-hungry data centers and for export via pipelines to Mexico and as liquefied natural gas (LNG) to markets around the world.
Spot prices at the Waha Hub rose to a positive 42 cents per million British thermal units (mmBtu) for Tuesday, up from minus 8 cents for Monday. Daily Waha prices first averaged below zero in 2019. They did so 17 times in 2019, six times in 2020, once in 2023, 49 times in 2024, 39 times in 2025, and a record 99 times so far this year.
Waha prices have averaged a negative $2.19 per mmBtu so far in 2026, compared with a positive $1.15 in 2025 and a positive $2.88 over the past five years (2021-2025).
(Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by Louise Heavens and Paul Simao)