Where the Sour Turns to Sweet – Targa Continues Its Sour-Gas Expansion With Stakeholder Deal

Few parts of the gas gathering and processing sector have been hotter lately than the Northern Delaware Basin, where crude-oil-focused wells also generate large volumes of sour associated gas packed with hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and carbon dioxide (CO2). Targa Resources, already the largest sour gas processor in the Permian, doubled down on that specialty on December 1 with the announcement that it will acquire Stakeholder Midstream, another player in that space, for a cool $1.25 billion. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the deal and the assets that come with it.

In our recent three-part blog series on sour gas processors in southeastern New Mexico and the counties just east of there in West Texas, we said the Permian’s Northern Delaware is the epicenter of U.S. crude oil production growth, with New Mexico’s Eddy and Lea counties accounting for just over half of all U.S. production growth from 2020-24, a four-year gain of nearly 1 MMb/d in only two counties. That growth, which has continued through the first 11 months of 2025, came as a result of producers like EOG Resources, Devon Energy, Mewbourne Oil, Occidental Petroleum and Matador Resources perfecting their drilling-and-completion techniques and — with their midstream partners — solving the challenge of dealing with elevated levels of H2S and CO2 in much of the associated gas that emerges from many wells there.

We also looked at how high the H2S and CO2 concentrations can be and the approaches midstream companies can use to bring down those levels. Generally speaking, the most effective way to slash H2S and CO2 content in associated gas is to run the gas through a centralized amine treatment facility, then compress the resulting H2S/CO2 mix into a supercritical liquid and inject it into an acid gas injection (AGI) well for permanent sequestration. (A bonus: The CO2 sequestration can provide federal tax credits.)

Sensing a unique opportunity, Targa Resources over the past few years has been expanding its gas gathering and processing presence in the Northern Delaware through a combination of acquisitions and organic growth. Targa, now the region’s largest treater of sour gas, currently has a total of 2.3 Bcf/d of centralized amine treatment capacity in the basin, including 920 MMcf/d at its Red Hills sour gas treating and processing complex in southern Lea County (blue triangle near center of Figure 1 below) and 850 MMcf/d at its Bull Moose facility across the state line in Winkler County, TX. The company also has seven AGI wells (brown dots) with the capacity to inject a total of more than 30 MMcf/d of liquefied H2S/CO2.