Strong demand for refined products (especially jet fuel) in Arizona and refinery closures in Southern California have spurred the development of a new refined products pipeline from West Texas to the Phoenix area. ONEOK, whose acquisition of Magellan Midstream Partners made it a player in refined products, has announced an open season for the proposed Sun Belt Connector pipeline, which would expand PADD 2 and PADD 3 refiners’ access to premium markets out West. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss ONEOK’s plan and how it could impact refined products markets.
ONEOK’s $18.8 billion purchase of Magellan Midstream Partners in September 2023 was transformational. For years, ONEOK had focused solely on the gas-and-NGLs side of things, with gas gathering systems, processing plants, storage, long-haul gas and NGL pipelines, and fractionators. Acquiring Magellan gave the company an equally impressive set of crude oil and refined products assets, including (on the crude oil side) the Longhorn Pipeline from the Permian to the Houston area; 30% stakes in the BridgeTex Pipeline (also from the Permian to Houston; ONEOK recently increased its stake to 60%) and Saddlehorn Pipeline (from the Denver-Julesburg Basin to the Cushing, OK, crude oil hub); and full or partial ownership interests in several major terminals, some of which handle refined products as well as crude.
The Magellan deal, which we discussed in detail in Tulsa Time, also gave ONEOK the U.S.’s longest common-carrier pipeline system for transporting gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. The 9,800-mile refined products network extends from the Gulf Coast into the eastern Rockies, the Great Plains and the Upper Midwest, as well as across Texas into New Mexico.
But Magellan was just the beginning. In 2024 and early 2025, ONEOK bought Medallion Midstream’s massive, interconnected crude oil gathering system in the Permian’s Midland Basin (for approximately $2.6 billion) and, in a two-step deal valued at about $7.6 billion, EnLink Midstream (see Islands in the Stream). The EnLink acquisition gave ONEOK crude oil and gas gathering, processing and transmission assets in the Permian and Oklahoma; gas gathering, processing and transmission assets and fractionation capacity in North Texas; and gas and NGL transmission pipelines, gas and NGL storage and fractionation assets in Louisiana. During and after ONEOK’s execution of its strategic acquisition plan, the company also has been undertaking a number of infrastructure projects, chief among them a new, 230-mile refined products pipeline from Scott City, KS, to Denver International Airport and a 400-Mb/d LPG export terminal in Texas City, TX, the latter in a joint venture with MPLX.
Today, we turn our attention to ONEOK’s latest project, the proposed Sun Belt Connector. The 24-inch-diameter greenfield pipeline (dashed orange arrow in Figure 1 below) would run from El Paso, TX, to the Phoenix area and be connected to the company’s existing refined products pipeline system across Texas and Oklahoma (blue lines and yellow tank icons). The new pipe would have an initial capacity of 200 Mb/d when it is expected to come online in mid-2029, but its capacity could be increased significantly if and when demand warrants.
Figure 1. ONEOK’s Proposed Sun Belt Connector. Source: RBN
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