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By Trend

Between 2014 and 2017 natural gas processing capacity and processing throughput increased by about 5 percent on a net basis in the US Lower 48 states, even as the number of individual plants declined, Trend reports citing the US Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Natural gas processing plant utilization rates stayed constant at 66 percent from 2014 to 2017, but several states experienced significant changes, largely reflecting changes in natural gas production across regions, according to EIA.

“Regions with increased natural gas production, such as Texas (Permian, Eagle Ford), West Virginia (Marcellus, Utica), and North Dakota (Bakken), showed the largest increase in natural gas processing capacity and throughput between 2014 and 2017. In West Virgina, increases in the utilization of existing plants led to an increase in throughput from 2014 to 2017 that exceeded its increase in processing capacity,” reads the analysis by EIA.

At the national level, utilization rates remained essentially flat between 2014 and 2017, although some states showed more significant changes, according to the report.

“In the Bakken region—Montana and North Dakota—both utilization rates and capacity increased, alongside increases in natural gas production. Similarly, Ohio and West Virginia, in the Appalachian Basin in the Northeast, also showed large increases in capacity and utilization. However, in states such as Texas and Oklahoma, processing capacity grew more than throughput, resulting in slightly lower utilization in those states. Texas’s lower utilization rate may be partly attributed to the state’s natural gas production decline between 2014 and 2017.”

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