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Updated June 2020

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Companies recover natural gas liquids (NGLs) mainly from processing natural gas. The natural gas can be raw gas that come from reservoirs that contain hydrocarbons, or it can be associated gas that is produced along with crude oil or crude bitumen.

Field Gas Processing Facilities

Field gas processing facilities, or field plants, ensure that the quality of the natural gas meets the pipeline specifications. This may mean removing NGLs. Depending on its extraction capability, a field plant may remove more NGLs than required. These additional volumes include pentanes plus and condensates. Companies sell these additional volumes separately to obtain full value for the NGL components.

Field plants send recovered NGL mix to centralized, large-scale fractionation plants where the mix is separated into the different components (e.g., ethane, propane).

Straddle Plants

Straddle plants are gas reprocessing plants that recover NGL components or NGL mix from marketable gas. They are usually located on main gas transmission pipelines at border delivery points.