- Blog

Join Together With Demand—MarkWest’s Utica/Marcellus Fractionation Facilities

Author Housley Carr

Natural gas liquids production in the Utica and “wet” Marcellus has taken off like a rocket, and all that ethane, propane, butane and natural gasoline needs to be either moved out of the region or consumed there. That presents a real operational challenge to midstream companies, mostly because the Upper Ohio River Valley offers very little of the NGL storage capacity that Mont Belvieu—the center of the NGL universe—has in spades. Storage is the mechanism that helps balance out supply and demand on any given day.  How can the nation’s fastest-growing NGL production play function without the luxury of significant NGL storage? Today, we continue our look at infrastructure development in the region.
- Blog

Right, you're bloody well right – You’ve got a lot of propane to store.

Author Rusty Braziel

Over the past couple of years, the NGL market has cussed and discussed every nuance of PADD I ethane.  The fear that ethane bottlenecks would curtail Marcellus drilling worried a lot of producers, and their investors.  But it finally  looks like the problem is being fixed, and the winners are settling out.  MarkWest and Sunoco will take 50 Mb/d north to Sarnia, Ontario on Mariner West.  And another 90 Mb/d will go south on Enterprise’s ATEX Express, the TEPPCO line reversal project.  Chesapeake and Range have both signed up to move barrels on ATEX which runs from MarkWest`s Houston, PA plant down to the Enterprise storage complex in Mont. Belvieu.  It’s nice to have one problem behind us.  Unless of course it turns out that Utica ethane piles on to the top of Marcellus.  But that’s another story.

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