fractionator

Canada’s energy industry has seen more than its share of merger-and-acquisition activity this year. The latest big deal involves the midstream sector, with Keyera agreeing on June 17 to buy Plains Midstream Canada’s NGL business in Canada for C$5.15 billion ($3.75 billion). The purchase will transform Alberta-focused Keyera into a nationwide NGL machine and caps its very busy first half of 2025. In today’s RBN blog, we take a closer look at the agreement and how it ties into other recent initiatives by the Canadian midstreamer. 

The demand for ethane by Alberta’s petrochemical industry has experienced a slow expansion in the past 20 or so years. However, that demand is likely to increase sharply by the end of the decade now that Dow Chemical has sanctioned a major expansion at its operations in Fort Saskatchewan, AB, that will more than double the site’s ethane requirements. As we discuss in today’s RBN blog, this will call for an “all-hands-on-deck” approach to increasing Alberta’s access to ethane supplies from numerous sources. 

Crude oil, natural gas and NGL production roared back in 2023. All three energy commodity groups hit record volumes, which means one thing: more infrastructure is needed. That means gathering systems, pipelines, processing plants, refinery units, fractionators, storage facilities and, above all, export dock capacity. That’s because most of the incremental production is headed overseas — U.S. energy exports are on the rise! If 2023’s dominant story line was production growth, exports and (especially) the need for new infrastructure, you can bet our blogs on those topics garnered more than their share of interest from RBN’s subscribers. Today we dive into our Top 10 blogs to uncover the hottest topics in 2023 energy markets. 

The prolific, liquids-rich Permian Basin and Eagle Ford plays have attracted more than a dozen midstream companies interested in meeting the growing need for natural gas processing plants, fractionators and natural gas liquids pipelines. Some of the larger players have assembled broad-based portfolios of assets, while others have focused on more stand-alone NGL pipeline or gas processing investments. Today we begin wrapping up our series on NGL-related assets in two of the nation’s most important shale plays.

To everything there is a season.  And this spring is the season for plant turnarounds in the NGL industry.  Fractionators will be offline.  Petrochemical plants will be down.  And NGL market prices, already buffeted by huge production increases from the shale phenomenon will feel the brunt of the outages.