EIA expects U.S. ethane production to grow by 9% in the second half of 2022

Ethane production has been increasing in the United States for the past five years, and it reached a monthly record of 2.5 million barrels per day (b/d) in March. More than 2.4 million b/d of ethane has been produced in the United States every month since then. In our Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), we forecast ethane production in the second half of 2022 to grow by 9% compared with the first half of 2022, averaging over 2.6 million b/d. We expect that production in 2022 will exceed production in 2021 by 16%, or 340,000 b/d.