The August EIA Natural Gas Monthly Summary provides some confirmation of how much the 1H 2016 low natural gas prices drove the increase in liquids stripping from the gas stream. The gas price decline in late winter coincided with a sharp increase in NGL production as a % of gross natural gas withdrawals. Throughout 2014 and 2015, the percentage of gross withdrawals that were produced as liquids varied between 5% and 5.3%. Then when prices crashed in early '16, it rose steadily to 5.9%. Now, with the mid-summer recovery in prices, we see the first significant decline. From a 5.9% peak in June, the percentage fell steeply to 5.5% in August.
In a week, we should see confirmation of this trend if September numbers have fallen further still.
and here's the same data in BCFD, showing the impact at upwards of 0.8 BCFD from December to June, which might approximate the potential reversal if prices continued rising.
And comparing Gross Production vs Dry Production over the same period, we see gross production growing more than dry production:
