There is no such thing as a typical NGL barrel. For example, the composition of y-grade production out of the Marcellus is significantly different from y-grade out of most of the Permian. And it is not just gas processing engineers who care. The make-up of an NGL barrel is inextricably linked to the value of that barrel. The reason is pretty simple: there’s a big difference in the value of each of the five NGL products. These days, natural gasoline is worth nearly eight times as much per gallon as ethane. Normal butane is worth 1.6X as much as propane. Consequently, the more natural gasoline and normal butane in your barrel versus the amounts of ethane and propane, the more the barrel is worth. So it’s important to anyone trying to follow the value added by gas processing and related infrastructure to understand where these numbers come from and how much the composition of a barrel can vary from basin to basin, or for that matter, from well to well. In Part 2 of our series on gas processing, we turn our attention to the variability in the mix of NGL production and its implication for processing uplift.
People Out There Turnin’ Natgas Into Gold, Part 2 – The Changing Composition of a U.S. NGL Barrel
