As we have seen, the Marcellus shale drilling success has lead to an over-supply of natural gas and a depressed price.
The driller's answer was - go to the wet gas Utica areas to capitalize on the higher value of natural gas liquids mainly ethane. Now this success has lead to an over-supply of ethane and the price of ethane is now less than the equivalent methane. The ethane cannot be left in the gas going into the pipeline because it contains more BTUs than methane (1070 vs approx 1025) and that would raise the value too close to the limit pipelines allow - 1100 BTU.
The answer may be to shut-in some Utica wells and return to the dry gas areas, but wait there is an over-supply of gas. What's needed is more useage, but that is going to take time and even then there's such an over-supply that prices are not going to change much for a long time.
The drillers are between a rock and a hard place.
Here are a couple of articles from Platts.
http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/Petrochemicals/60...
http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/NaturalGas/6987988