Regional perspective: US NGL

S. McGinn, Contributing Editor The US petroleum market has undergone a significant expansion due to the advent of shale gas, and its effects are leading a booming resurgence in the NGL market. Shale gas has spurred a buildout in the domestic NGL market, from key fractionation and storage hubs to petrochemical plants and export terminals. The primary sources of raw, or Y-grade, NGL in the US are natural gas processing plants and crude oil refineries. Gas processing plants produce raw NGL as a mixed stream that must be further processed, or fractionated, to achieve a purity form (Fig. 1). Refineries make LPG (i.e., propane and butane) as a byproduct of oil refining (Fig. 2). F