The EIA’s This Week In Petroleum has an excellent piece on the growing importance of ethane, here…
“As a result of growing supply and demand, accounting for the growth in ethane supply and disposition is becoming an increasingly important factor in liquid fuels balances.
Ethane is a hydrocarbon gas liquid (HGL) and one of several natural gas plant liquids (NGPL) found in raw natural gas. Although heavier NGPL such as propane, normal butane, isobutane, and natural gasoline must be removed from raw natural gas before being put into interstate pipelines, some ethane can be left in pipeline-quality natural gas (a practice known as ethane rejection). The incentives to reject ethane, leaving it in natural gas, follow the ethane-to-natural gas price differential, so when ethane prices are significantly higher than natural gas prices (on an energy-equivalent basis), producers achieve greater revenue by extracting and selling ethane separately rather than leaving it in the natural gas stream.”
Here are some pictures (but do read the whole thing!)
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