The Curve and the Headline

By Stephen Clayman · August 21, 2026

Mineral Owners,

Here is a habit worth breaking. When a mineral owner wants to know whether now is a good time to sell a gas royalty, they look up the price of natural gas.

That number is almost irrelevant to what your royalty is worth, and understanding why is worth more than any market call I could give you.

You own two decades, not one month

A producing gas royalty is a claim on production stretching out ten, twenty, sometimes forty years. Its value is the whole stream, discounted back.

The spot price is what gas traded for this month. It moves on weather, on storage reports, on a cold snap in Chicago. It tells you almost nothing about what gas will fetch in 2034, which is where most of your value actually sits.

The number that does matter is the forward curve: what the market will contract today to pay for gas delivered in each future month. And the near end of that curve and the far end routinely point in opposite directions.

Every honest valuation of a gas royalty runs off the forward curve. Every mailed offer I have ever seen quotes a spot headline when it justifies itself at all.

What is moving the long end now

Two structural demand sources, and they are different in kind from the weather.

LNG export. Liquefaction capacity contracts for gas over fifteen and twenty year terms. That is demand with a signature on it, not a forecast.

Data centers. This is the newer one and it is moving quickly. Power demand from computing has grown fast enough that developers stopped waiting for grid interconnection queues and started contracting for gas-fired generation directly, in some cases behind the meter, meaning the plant sits at the data center and never touches the public grid.

The consequence for gas producers is that a new category of buyer is contracting for supply on long terms near the wellhead. Williams has pointed to the Haynesville and Marcellus as the basins positioned to feed it. Analysts have also been clear that data centers are still playing second fiddle to LNG in absolute volume, so I am not going to tell you this is a revolution.

What I will tell you is that both of these are long dated demand, and long dated demand affects the long end of the curve. Which is the part you own.

What this does not mean

It does not mean hold your minerals and wait for a windfall. I have no idea what gas will do and neither does anyone sending you mail.

It does not mean your county is about to be drilled. Demand pulls on basins with pipeline access to it, which is a real constraint that has nothing to do with the rock under you.

And it does not mean a low offer is an insult. Sometimes a low offer is a correct offer.

What it does mean

Ask what deck they used. When a buyer gives you a number, ask which price forecast produced it. Three things can happen:

1. They give you the curve. Now you can check it, and you can compare two offers on the same basis.
2. They give you a flat price. That is a choice, and a flat deck applied to a twenty year asset is usually a conservative one. Ask why.
3. They will not tell you. That is the informative answer.

I would rather you asked us that question than took our number on faith. An offer you cannot check is not an offer, it is a suggestion.

The counties this actually touches

If you own gas royalties in the East Texas Haynesville, the Western Haynesville, the Marcellus or the Utica, you are in the basins nearest this demand.

If you own in the Hugoton, the Fayetteville, or eastern Kentucky, you are not, and I would rather say so. Those are long, flat, slowly declining streams whose value comes from duration rather than from proximity to a new buyer. That is still a real thing to own. It is priced differently, and the same question applies: what deck, and what decline rate.

Where to read more

• How mineral rights are valued, including the price deck question
• When not to sell
• Questions to ask a buyer and got an offer letter?
• The East Texas Haynesville and the Western Haynesville
• The Marcellus and the Utica

Berlin Royalties is a mineral buyer and a landman shop in Tulsa, not a law firm, a tax advisor or a commodities analyst. Nothing here is a price forecast or investment advice, and if it reads like one I have written it badly.