MarkWest Energy Partners

Natural gas processing in the Marcellus and Utica plays has quickly become a much larger—and more complex—business as major players race to keep up with fast-rising capacity needs and to ensure that the various elements of their infrastructure operate as an integrated, well-oiled “machine”. And, in a region with only minimal NGL storage capacity, one of that machine’s most important characteristics must be an ability to deal with all the “what-ifs” that could otherwise lead to logistical chaos, particularly those issues dealing with ethane. Today, we continue our in-depth review of Marcellus/Utica NGL infrastructure with a look at MarkWest’s innovative NGL network and distributed de-ethanization system.

There is no doubt about it: With its location, infrastructure and long history, Mont Belvieu, Texas, is and will remain the center of the NGL fractionation world. It is worth noting, though, that fast-increasing production in the “wet” Marcellus and Utica has been spurring development of a new NGL hub of sorts in southwestern Pennsylvania, West Virginia and eastern Ohio. But the fractionation sector in the Utica/Marcellus is an orange to Mont Belvieu’s apple—that is, the infrastructure needed to separate NGL into its various purity products is evolving in an entirely different (and, well, more “fractionated”) way near Houston, PA than it did near Houston, TX. Today we explain this and summarize new fractionation-related developments in the Utica/Marcellus.