Combustion characteristics of natural gas premixed flames is studied experimently and numerically by adopting a counterflow as a flamelet model in turbulent flames. Flame speeds are measured by employing LDV, and the results show that flame speed increases linearly with strain rate, which agrees well with numerical results. Parametric dependences of extinction strain rates are studied numerically with detailed kinetic mechanism to show that the addition of ethand to a methane premixed flame makes the flame more resistant to strain rate. The effect of pressure on the extinction strain rate is that the extinction strain rate increases up to 10 atm and them decreases, which is explained by competition of chain branching H+O2=OH+O and recombination reaction H+O2+M=HO2+M. Detailed mechanism having seventy-four step is systematically reduced to a nine-step and a five-step thermal NOx chemistry is reduced to two-step. Comparison between the results of the detailed and the reduced mechanisms demonstrates that the reduced mechanism successfully describes the essential features of natural gas premixed flames including extinction strain rate and NOx production.