Since 2012, when horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing techniques became more common, U.S. production of natural gas plant liquids (NGPLs) has significantly increased, averaging 4.3 million bpd in 2018, up from 2.5 million bpd in 2012. Nearly three-quarters of U.S. NGPL production is concentrated within six producing regions.
The Permian, Eagle Ford and Appalachian regions made up more than half of all U.S. NGPL production in 2017. An additional quarter of NGPL production was located in three other regions: the Anadarko Basin in western Oklahoma and Texas; the Bakken play in North Dakota and eastern Montana; and the Green River, Piceance, Uinta and Paradox Basins in the Western Rockies region of Utah, Wyoming and Colorado.
NGPL production has generally increased across all regions since 2012 as production of natural gas has grown. The largest increase has been in the northern Appalachian region, where production increased from 43,000 bpd in 2012 to 512,000 bpd in 2017. NGPL production has doubled in both the Permian Basin in western Texas and southeastern New Mexico and the Eagle Ford play in southern Texas from 2012 to 2017. NGPL production in the Bakken play more than tripled.
Natural gas requires processing before entering interstate natural gas pipelines. The raw, or wet, natural gas includes methane as well as NGPLs such as ethane, propane, normal butane, isobutane and natural gasoline. Once impurities are removed from the wet natural gas, the mixed NGPLs are transported for further processing at fractionation plants that separate the NGPLs into distinct commodities.
In most production regions, NGPLs must be shipped by pipeline to fractionation centers, such as Mont Belvieu, Texas, and Conway, Kansas, both of which act as storage, distribution and pricing hubs for NGPLs. Northern Appalachia is one of the few areas that fractionate NGPLs in the same region where they are produced.
For more information, visit www.eia.gov or call (202) 586-8800.