blockquote/blockquoteI'm not going to cover the full details of the Halliburton quarter (earnings lower, but beat estimates...we know the deal), but it was interesting that the CEO went out of his way to speak about natural gas prices. (a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/OILPRD/idUSN2049810620090720"data via Reuters/a).br /br /blockquoteHalliburton Cospan style="cursor: pointer;" id="symbol_HAL.N_0"/span, the world's second-largest oilfield services company, posted a better-than-expected quarterly profit on Monday, boosting its shares, but it warned that North American natural gas markets were likely to stay weak through the end of the year.br /br /Natural gas prices in the United States have tumbled to less than half of year-ago levels, and high inventories were expected to curb spending by energy producers on new wells.br /br /"Due to the continued weakness in natural gas demand, reflected in the high injection rates for working gas storage, we believe it is unlikely that there will be a meaningful recovery in natural gas ...

Gastar Exploration Ltd. (AMEX: GST) is an independent energy company engaged in the exploration, development, and production of natural gas and oil in the United States and Australia. The company focuses their efforts on identifying, acquiring, and exploring possible natural gas and oil properties that show the potential to produce significant product. Their emphasis rests on prospective deep structures identified through seismic and other analytical techniques, as well as unconventional natural gas reserves, such as coal bed methane (CBM).

The company’s primary coal bed methane properties are found in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana, and in the Gunnedah and Gippsland Basins of Australia. Their drilling activities are focused on exploiting their multi-year inventory of drilling locations in the Deep Bossier Sands and Knowles Limestone plays in the Hilltop area of East Texas, as well as the emerging Marcellus Shale play in Appalachia.

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On Wednesday we detailed three of the largest issues affecting oil prices. To review they are: Geopolitical concerns (Iran, Russia, and Pakistan) Speculation (in July, 11% of oil contracts were controlled by one trader) The over-leveraged financial system. These three items make forecasting oil prices virtually impossible. Fortunately, oil’s ugly cousin, natural gas, doesn’t suffer quite the same fate. Natural gas is relatively free of the first two factors—the US produces most of its gas domestically and speculation in the natural gas markets is significantly lower than in the oil markets. However, neither of these stopped natural gas from being brutalized by the third factor: over-leveraged investors. Natural gas has a lot going for it. Cleaner and cheaper than oil, less politically charged than nuclear power, and located domestically, it’s hands down the most viable choice for long-term energy policy. US power plants know this and ...