How many times in the past five years have you heard the one about the way that new fracking and horizontal drilling technology have created long term abundance of cheap natural gas in North America?

I just took this snapshot of daily energy prices as of January 22, 2014. (The daily energy price page will provide a different picture if you click the link on a different day.)

Snapshot of daily spot market energy prices – Jan 22m 2014

Here is the natural gas price table:

US natural gas spot prices January 22, 2014

Those circled numbers do not have a misplaced decimal point.

Just imagine how high prices might get when next week’s arctic blast hits. How do you think New Englanders will feel next winter when their grid no longer has the support of 620 MWe from Vermont Yankee.

It’s not too late to ask Entergy really nicely to keep the plant running. If I lived in Vermont, I would be using my constitutional right to petition the government to see if I could convince my representatives to start the process ASAP.