Now, Another Bottleneck In The US Ethane Story -- October 27, 2018

I assume the four major processes involving ethane:

• production at the well-head
• fractionation
• transportation
• end user (petrochemical plant)

I believe back in the early days of the Bakken boom, the ethane was not wanted because there was inadequate demand by the end user (not enough petrochemical plants).

See ethane rejection.

Now it appears there is not enough ethane available to meet end user demand: not enough capacity to separate ethane from the other natural gas liquids (NGLs).

If I that correct, imagine all the petrochemical plants that have sprung up over the past few years, or expansion of existing plants.

See this article in the Houston Chronicle.

By the way, I haven't heard a thing about NGLs Badlands in a long, long time. It seems I was sent a note on it recently but if so I lost it. I did ask for an update on April 16, 2018, but no response (at least nothing that I posted). See this post, from June 21, 2016:

North Dakota’s top oil producer—Continental Resources Inc.—has signed a long-term agreement to supply ethane to a proposed $6.5 billion polyethylene plant that Badlands NGL plans to build in the state.

“The interesting thing is that the Continental announcement is leading to very serious dialogues with other producers in North Dakota,” William Gilliam, Badlands CEO, told The Bakken magazine. “We are also pursuing very serious discussions in Canada.”

He cited a recent report by the Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI) which said Canada could produce 350,000 barrels of ethane per day. Gilliam noted that he will be in Alberta this week for meetings with potential ethane suppliers.

“We’re actually looking at building a bigger ethane cracker in North Dakota because of the fact that we think we can be successful in gaining an important amount of ethane from Canada,” Gilliam said.

My thoughts: nice problem to have. "They" will solve it. Lots of jobs. If Proposition 112 in Colorado passes, there will be a lot of experienced workers ready to help out in Texas.