The quarter was a pivotal one for Keyera, as it closed the CAD$4.6 billion purchase of Plains’ Canadian NGLs business, and the CAD$1.2 billion purchase of the other 50% of KAPS from Stonepeak.
Pembina’s second quarter earnings call and press release underscored the company’s strong positioning to reap the benefits of anticipated growth in Western Canadian crude oil and natural gas production, which seem to be gaining momentum in recent months with several announcements regarding new ca
CSV Midstream Solutions announced on June 9 that it plans to build a 35 Mb/d fractionation plant in Fort Saskatchewan. Subject to regulatory approval, CSV expects to make a final investment decision (FID) on the project by early 2027, targeting startup in 2029.
On Monday May 25 Pembina Pipeline Corporation announced it is proceeding with the Heartland Extraction Plant, an upsized and renamed evolution of the Yellowhead Extraction Plant first proposed in early 2025.
Keyera’s Q1 2026 report and conference call on May 14 provided updates on projects already underway, the re-start of its iso-octane facility, and some color on longer-term growth opportunities.
In 2024, more than 9 billion gallons of propane were delivered to U.S. consumer markets, primarily for residential heating and cooking, with substantial volumes supporting the commercial, industrial, agricultural and transportation sectors. It is a physically complicated business because, unlike electricity and natural gas, which are delivered through wires and pipelines, respectively, the vast majority of the propane used by U.S. consumers is delivered by some combination of pipelines, rail cars and, ultimately, trucks. How does that complicated supply chain work in real life? In today’s RBN blog, we begin a detailed look at the U.S. propane market.
What’s the fastest-growing U.S. hydrocarbon? You guessed it — ethane. Since 2016, ethane production has grown at almost 2.5 times the rate of crude oil or natural gas and 1.5X that of other natural gas liquids (NGLs). And there’s a lot more upside potential where that came from. It’s entirely demand-pull, meaning that U.S. ethane production growth is being driven by increasing domestic and export demand for the petrochemical feedstock. Shell’s new steam cracker in Pennsylvania is online, CP Chem and Qatar Energy are planning a new cracker in Orange, TX, and other projects are in the works. On the exports front, both Enterprise and Energy Transfer announced export-terminal-expansion projects in 2022. All this new ethane demand needs supply, and fortunately the U.S. has the barrels, not only from ever-increasing NGL production, but also from ethane that today is being rejected and sold as natural gas. And the markets will need new pipes, fractionators, and ships to get that ethane to market. With today’s RBN blog, we begin a series to explore what these developments mean for U.S. ethane market players.
For the past few years, demand for U.S.-sourced ethane has been on the rise as petrochemical companies in the U.S. and abroad developed new, ethane-only steam crackers and retrofitted existing crackers to allow more ethane to be used as feedstock. U.S. NGL production was increasing too, of course, alongside growth in crude oil-focused plays like the Permian and “wet” gas plays like the Marcellus/Utica. But recently, drilling-and-completion activity has slowed to a crawl and NGL production has been leveling off, which means that less of the ethane that comes out of the ground with oil and gas will be “rejected” into natural gas and more will be separated out at fractionation plants. Today, we conclude a series on ethane exports with a look at U.S. NGL production, ethane supply and demand, ethane exports, and ethane prices.
The U.S. is by far the world’s largest ethane producer, and exports one-seventh of what it produces, with most of the exported volumes tied to long-term contracts to supply ethane-consuming steam crackers. Canada is the #1 importer of U.S. ethane, receiving its volumes via three pipelines. As for U.S. exports by ship, India is on top, followed by the UK and Norway. But watch out! China, which started importing U.S. ethane a year or so ago, is poised to buy a heck of lot more, with most of the incremental volumes to be shipped out of a new ethane export terminal about to come online in Nederland, TX. Today, we continue our series with a look at the Orbit Ethane Export Terminal, which is being jointly developed by Energy Transfer and Satellite Petrochemical, the U.S. subsidiary of a Chinese petrochemical company.
Taken together, the ethane-related infrastructure projects developed in the U.S. over the past several years serve as a reliable feedstock-delivery network for a number of steam crackers in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. NGL pipelines transport y-grade to fractionation hubs, fractionators split the mixed NGLs into ethane and other “purity” products, ethane pipelines move the feedstock to export terminals fitted with the special storage and loading facilities that ethane requires, and a class of cryogenic ships — Very Large Ethane Carriers, or VLECs — sails ethane to mostly long-term customers in distant lands. The end results of all this development are virtual ethane pipelines between, say, the Marcellus/Utica and Scotland, or the Permian and India. Today, we continue our series on ethane exports with a look at the two existing export terminals, the ethane volumes they have been handling, and where all that ethane has been headed.
