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They were a blessing during the recession and now, since they make power cheaper to produce and purchase. Natural gas is even looking attractive pricewise compared with dirty coal as a fuel of choice for utilities and power producers.

But low natural gas prices have also been a curse. Companies producing natural gas from ever-popular shale rock -- most notably Chesapeake Energy Corp. -- have had to form joint ventures with deep-pocketed foreign players to keep their leases and production humming. Some, including Chesapeake as well as EOG Resources Inc., have even made moves to fill their portfolios with more oil-producing properties; oil is currently fetching a prettier penny than gas. The oil and gas majors obviously think it's a good time to buy, with Exxon Mobil Corp. picking up XTO Energy Inc. at the end of last year for $35 billion and Chevron Corp. agreeing to buy Atlas Energy Inc. in November for $4.3 billion.

Exco Resources Inc. CEO Doug Miller made the boldest move yet, proposing on Nov. 1 to take the company private until conditions improve (which he thinks won't be for 12 to 18 months). "It's an opportunity to get private and make some acquisitions," he said on a conference call.

Independent power producers are also suffering from persistently low-priced natural gas, which they can buy cheap but can't charge the same prices as they had to customers. Some, like NRG Energy Inc., are diversifying portfolios into renewables, nuclear and retail power to have a better balance, but most aren't investing in new power plants.

That could pose a problem for power supplies later on, Greg Aliff, U.S. energy and resource leader at Deloitte LLP, warned at a conference in Houston in November. "The U.S. has been the beneficiary of low natural gas prices. But the longer-term implication is stalled construction of base-load power plants," he said. "We might find ourselves in the position where we haven't kept up on the supply side in generation."

The more leveraged power producers are hamstrung, thus putting themselves on the block or restructuring. In August, Boston Generating LLC filed for bankruptcy and has since been scooped up by Constellation Energy Group Inc. And Dynegy Inc. is back on the auction block or may restructure after its sale to Blackstone Group LP failed. Both of those transactions were a bet on higher natural gas prices and were contested by shareholders and creditors for being undervalued.

More such transactions may be coming. Edison Mission Energy, a unit of Edison International, is overleveraged and may have to consider a sale or reorganization, analysts say.

Higher natural gas prices aren't expected anytime soon. All that shale gas production has led to record-high inventories, and this winter isn't expected to be cold enough to whittle that down and generate higher prices. That could mean low natural gas prices until this time next year or beyond. "This is going to be a long slog: Gas prices could stay below $6 for a long time," Adam Sieminski, an economist at Deutsche Bank AG, said at the Deloitte conference. "We need to find a way to use more natural gas in the U.S. energy arena."

Dallas billionaire T. Boone Pickens thinks the answer is natural gas-­powered vehicles, starting with the trucking fleet in the U.S., and has been pushing Congress to give more tax breaks to get it started. But Senate Democrats canceled a vote in November that would have done that, and no one has since picked up the baton.

So when might we see natural gas prices increase? Allen Brooks, a longtime energy watcher and managing director at energy investment banking boutique Parks Paton Hoepfl & Brown in Houston, isn't sure, but he thinks prices will stay low if companies continue to sink more money into the shales and the economy doesn't improve drastically.

"It may take considerable time for the industry to overcome the imbalances from too many rigs drilling gas shale wells, the working off of the backlog of drilled-but-uncompleted shale wells and for gas consumption to grow more rapidly," he wrote in a recent report. "Without these three conditions being met, gas producers will continue to wonder whether this period of abundance will morph into another gas bubble similar to the one that haunted the industry in the 1980s." That would be a curse.