Less than a handful of U.S. midstream companies own and operate extensive NGL networks that do it all: extract mixed NGLs from associated gas at their processing plants, transport that “Y-grade” to their underground salt-cavern storage facilities in Mont Belvieu, fractionate mixed NGLs into so-called “purity products” at their fractionators, then pipe that ethane, LPG and other products either to domestic end-users or to company-owned export docks. Enterprise Products Partners is a member of that select group and, as we discuss in today’s RBN blog, its NGL network — which stretches from Appalachia to the Permian to the Rockies — is the most extensive.
As we said in Part 1 of this series, the rise in U.S. NGL production in the early years of the Shale Era was accompanied by a massive build-out of the infrastructure required to take NGLs from the wellhead to the consumers of ethane, propane and other NGL purity products. While we have written countless blogs about the bits and pieces of infrastructure development, what we haven’t done, at least until now, is discuss in holistic terms the NGL networks that a select few large midstream companies have come to own and operate. We started our review with Energy Transfer, which owns NGL networks in Texas and (as we discussed in Part 2) the Northeast as well.
In Part 3, we shifted our focus to Targa Resources, which, in addition to being a major gas gatherer and processor in the Permian and a number of other production areas, owns the Grand Prix NGL pipeline system and is one of the biggest players in Mont Belvieu, the fractionation hub east of Houston. Targa also owns and operates a huge LPG export terminal along the Houston Ship Channel at Galena Park.
Today, it’s Enterprise’s turn. Put simply, Enterprise is an NGL giant. So much so, we’ll need two blogs to cover all their NGL assets. We’ll start with the company’s nearly 10 Bcf/d of net gas-processing capacity, about three-quarters of which is located either in the Permian, the Eagle Ford, the Piceance and the Green River production areas (the latter in Colorado and Wyoming, respectively). Within the Permian, Enterprise owns seven plants with a combined 1.6 Bcf/d of processing capacity in the Delaware Basin and five plants with just over 1 Bcf/d of capacity in the Midland Basin. In the Eagle Ford in South Texas, it owns eight plants with 2.2 Bcf/d of capacity, and in the Rockies, it owns another 3.6 Bcf/d (2.2 Bcf/d in the Piceance, 800 MMcf/d in Green River, and 600 MMcf/d in the San Juan Basin in New Mexico). The company also owns another 1.3 Bcf/d of processing capacity along the Louisiana/Mississippi coast (processing associated gas from the offshore Gulf of Mexico) and another 410 MMcf/d of capacity in Texas’s Cotton Valley and Wilcox-Woodbine production areas.
Join Backstage Pass to Read Full Article
