Though it lacked the thunder of massive global LNG projects and grand announcements by supermajors about their super-duper investment plans, NGL did manage to sneak into at least one discussion at CERAWeek by IHS Markit this week in Houston.

One perspective came from an upstream representative from a company operating in Appalachia.

“As a producer what we simply do is look at the economic signals and say, ‘Do I really need to extract all of the ethane or should I simply blend it?’” Blue Jenkins, chief commercial officer of EQT Corp. (NYSE: EQT), said during a panel on new gas supply.

“There is a large component of producers in the Northeast that still have that flexibility,” he said. “If the ethane prices jumped materially, we would look to pull 10,000 to 30,000 barrels a day of our production and amortize that.”

Jenkins said his company evaluates on a month-to-month and season-to-season basis. EQT anticipates that demand growth will come when crackers are completed and come online. He expects price stabilization, at least, to come with it; more likely will be some level of upward price movement.

But what about exports? Alex Archila, asset president for shale at the Australian energy giant BHP Billiton Ltd. (NYSE: BHP), responded to a question about the Permian Basin’s possible role and seemed content to stay within the comfortable confines of the U.S. Gulf Coast.

“You would certainly need more transport capacity from the Permian to the water, and then you’re exposed to world dynamics,” Archila said. “The way we see it right now is that in the southern United States you have one of the world’s largest processing capacities.”

Archila said BHP did expect a very steep cost curve rise in oil prices but not gas prices. There, he anticipates a cost curve that is flat.

The hypothetical NGL barrel took hits of 8.6% at Mont Belvieu, Texas, and 5.9% at Conway, Kan., in the past week as butane prices continued to plummet. With the exception of C5+, all NGL components lost ground.

En*Vantage’s analysis of U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data showed a decrease of 1.2 million barrels (MMbbl) in December to 52 MMbbl in inventory. Ethane extraction was also down and En*Vantage forecasts that ethane stocks will drop to about 46 MMbbl by June. The analysts anticipate a slow increase in cracking demand as expansions at Dow’s Plaquemine, La., and LyondellBasell’s Corpus Christi, Texas, plants come online.

On paper, fundamentals would appear strong for ethane but, as En*Vantage noted in its report, prices keep dropping. Last week, ethane fell 9% at Mont Belvieu for the third straight weekly drop; ethane stumbled by 11% at Conway for the fourth straight weekly drop.

Propane dropped for the fourth straight week at both hubs to their lowest levels in three months. With the drawdown of inventories continuing, rising prices could play havoc with export stability. The next few months could see some wild price swings for propane, En*Vantage believes.

The ongoing butane correction returned prices to their lowest point since mid-November at both hubs, but still well above what they were last year at this time.

Storage of natural gas in the Lower 48 declined by 68 billion cubic feet (Bcf) in the week ended March 3, the EIA reported. The decrease, above the Bloomberg consensus of 62 Bcf, resulted in a total of 2.295 Tcf. The figure is 7.7% less than the 2.487 Tcf figure at the same time in 2016 and 18.8% above the five-year average of 1.932 Tcf.

Joseph Markman can be reached at jmarkman@hartenergy.com and @JHMarkman.

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