The much-anticipated DeLa Express Gas Pipeline project is taking a step forward. U.K.- based Wood, a consulting and engineering firm, has been awarded the front-end engineering design (FEED) contract for the proposed wet gas system (see map below), the company said this week.
Wood will design roughly 645 miles of 42-inch diameter mainline pipeline and about 139 miles of associated laterals. It will also manage the compressor station subcontractor, Burrow Global, LLC. The mainline is the longest and widest part of the pipeline path.
Project owner Moss Lake Partners, expects the system to begin service in 2028. It will stretch 690 miles from the Delaware side of the Permian Basin - Loving County in West Texas - and then across the Texas-Louisiana border to Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana. With the capacity to transport a whopping 2 Bcf/d of gas and liquids, it will also offer four lateral pipes within the basin and a 6.2-mile delivery lateral in Louisiana.
The project would offer much-needed takeaway capacity out of the Permian where gas output has exceeded pipeline egress capacity, pushing prices to negative levels. That means producers are basically paying buyers to take the gas off their hands.
Touted as an ambitious project, its being closely watched for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the feat of transporting wet gas from producing areas - not an industry norm – to markets hundreds of miles away when there is a tendency for the liquids to condense and fall out into the pipeline. We discussed this and more extensively in our blog Oceanfront Property.
