PITTSBURG POST-GAZETTE: …Ethane in July cost about 31 cents per gallon, a drop of about 60 percent from one year ago and the steepest drop among the hydrocarbons extracted from the Marcellus Shale gas formation that underlies much of Pennsylvania.
An unseasonably warm winter that reduced the need for heaters didn’t help things, driving the price of propane down to 88 cents per gallon in July 2012 from the $1.53 seen one year prior, according to figures at the country’s main processing plant in Mont Belvieu, Texas. The propane market has endured sudden month-to-month plunges this year, with a 20 percent drop from April to May.
The softening in prices is sorry news for drillers that have relied on natural gas liquids to compensate for record-low natural gas prices. Natural gas liquids, or NGLs, are extracted alongside the natural gas and stripped out for sale at prices that tend to follow higher crude oil figures. Their use in manufacturing, particularly in plastics, have made them desirable to a petrochemical industry growing to accommodate the rise in production… (more)
