Frac Spread: Weak Ethane Prices Fly South

This spring, some 3.5 billion birds will migrate north to the United States, according to ornithologists at Cornell University.

In contrast, ethane prices are heading due south. Last week’s price at Mont Belvieu, Texas, which averaged under 21 cents per gallon (gal) over the five-day tracking period, was the lowest since early December 2017, or 17 months. On April 2, the last day of the period, the price dipped below 19 cents/gal.

The reason is that, unlike the birds, ethane has nowhere to go. Ethylene inventories are bloated, say analysts at EnVantage Inc., so ethane crackers have had to cut back on what they produce and how much feedstock they need. The bright spot in this picture, EnVantage says, is that exports from Morgan’s Point on the Houston Ship Channel are strong because the ongoing shutdown of the Mariner East pipelines in Pennsylvania has cut off exports from Marcus Hook.

Oversupply is afflicting propane as well. Stocks are at about 40% above last year’s inventory and Gulf Coast exports are not sufficient to handle the excess. In the week ending March 29, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that propane exports averaged 1.143 million barrels per day (bbl/d).

“With seasonal demand for propane rapidly subsiding, it is going to take propane exports to reach 1.2 million bbl/d for the next several months to keep propane inventories from exceeding the peak levels reached in early October 2018, which was 80 million barrels,” EnVantage analysts wrote in their report.

So far this year, they wrote, propane exports average 940,000 bbl/d. To generate higher exports from the Gulf Coast, the price will need to drop further relative to the price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil. On April 2, the last day of this tracking week, propane’s price at Mont Belvieu was 42.4% of WTI’s.

Price comparisons of NGL last week with those of the same time in 2018 are stark. Mont Belvieu ethane is down 21.5%; propane is down 19%; butane is down 16.2%; isobutane is down 12.9%; and C₅₊ is down 12.4%.

In the week ended March 29, storage of natural gas in the Lower 48 experienced an increase of 23 billion cubic feet (Bcf), the EIA reported, compared to the Bloomberg consensus and  Stratas Advisors predictions of a 10 Bcf increase. The figure resulted in a total of 1.13 trillion cubic feet (Tcf). That is 16.8% below the 1.358 Tcf figure at the same time in 2018 and 30.9% below the five-year average of 1.635 Tcf.

Technical issues with Hart Energy’s data provider do not allow us to post the price of ethane from Conway, Kan., this week, nor can we calculate the price of the hypothetical Conway NGL barrel. As a result of the data interruption, prices are not available for the second half of March, resulting in our inability to calculate the average price of Conway ethane for March 2019 and first-quarter 2019. We apologize for the inconvenience.