Hedley & Company

08/22/2026

Coming Soon

08/22/2026

08/22/2026

Oil closed out the week near $94 a barrel and won't move again until markets reopen Monday, capping a second straight weekly gain as Washington tightens the vise on Iran's economy and the standoff over the Strait of Hormuz shows no sign of resolving. That's the headline number. The more telling one showed up in the same week's data: Baker Hughes reported the first drop in U.S. rig counts in a month, even as prices climbed. Rising prices are supposed to pull rigs into the field. When they don't, it's worth asking what's actually holding domestic supply back — a question today's commentary takes on directly.

Volume 1, Issue 3 | Saturday, August 22, 2026 | A Publication of the Hedley & Company

08/03/2026

Replacement or Addition?: Following the money through West Virginia’s new power-plant buildout

Three major power announcements arrived within days of one another, each exposing a different side of the same shift in West Virginia’s electricity economy. The public record shows why regulators should examine not only whether the new plants are needed, but whether customers could be left paying for the new capacity, the old capacity, the transmission built around them and the economic losses that follow when coal generation is displaced.

I do not believe in coincidences. When three announcements land within days of one another and each concerns the future value of a large West Virginia power plant, the timing deserves more than three separate news stories. Dominion Energy announced plans for a 2.6-gigawatt natural-gas plant beside its existing Mt. Storm coal station. American Electric Power agreed to buy the 710-megawatt Longview coal plant and the permits for a possible 1.2-gigawatt gas plant at the same Maidsville complex. Omnis Pleasants, the company that bought the Pleasants Power Station with a plan to produce hydrogen and graphite from coal, entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy after the promised conversion failed to reach commercial operation.

Three major power announcements arrived within days of one another, each exposing a different side of the same shift in West Virginia’s electricity economy.

07/07/2026

Check out my new post! Twenty-six weeks into 2026, the single most important number in this issue is not a production figure — it is $3.33. That is where Henry Hub natural gas closed Week 26, up 47.35% year-on-year, and it is the number that has finally put CAPP coal back on the right side of the dispatch ledger for the first time in this publication's tracking window. Every domestic thermal basin this report follows — CAPP, NAPP, ILB, PRB — now prices below gas on a heat-equivalent basis. That is not a small thing. It is the difference between a fuel-switchable utility choosing gas and choosing coal in a real-time dispatch decision, and it has been the single biggest missing ingredient in this market's recovery story all year.

The honest caveat belongs in the same sentence as the good news: Henry Hub's spike is substantially geopolitical, tied to the same Middle East disruption that pushed Newcastle and ARA to multi-year highs. This week's interim U.S.-Iran agreement, reopening the Strait of Hormuz and lifting Iranian oil sanctions, is already unwinding the international side of that premium — Newcastle fell 10% in a single week. If domestic gas supply normalizes on a similar timeline, CAPP could find itself back above gas within a quarter, exactly where it sat in May. Producers and marketers should treat the current window as an opportunity to move tons and lock in favorable term positions, not as a permanent repricing of the coal-versus-gas relationship.

A Publication of The Hedley Company | Charleston, W.Va.

07/02/2026

From All of Us to All of You, Happy Independence Day 250!