Quick Summary As a kindness to those who are busy planting tomatoes and just want to know if they should order wood pellets for next winter, here is the quick version: The number of rigs has already fallen enough to cause natural gas prices to rise next winter: CHK sees U.S. natural gas prices at Henry Hub averaging $4-6/mmcf in 2009 and $7-9 in 2010 and beyond The fix is underway says Chesapeake Energy . What they mean is that natural gas prices are going back up this winter. The number of rigs drilling for natural gas is going down. Fewer rigs means fewer new wells and eventually less natural gas and higher prices for consumers. This is the third article investigating the possibility of a spike in natural gas prices during early 2010. In this article we look at the scenarios Chesapeake has created _base_d on the how low the drilling rig count The reason for this repeating cycle is that price dips cause reductions in the number of wells drilled. Those reductions cut the flow of natural gas until a shortage develops. Prices then spike as consumers compete for too little natural gas. High prices cause users to cut back on natural gas purchases and encourage more wells to be drilled. Eventually these cause an excess of natural gas and prices fall into another dip, setting up the next spike and repeating the pattern. ). The current well head price for natural gas is far below the average producing cost, meaning that most natural gas producers cannot make a profit at these natural gas prices, and for this reason they are drastically cutting back the number of drilling rigs.