More on the Natural Gas Gathering and Processing Projects in the Bakken -- North Dakota, USA

It's funny how things turn out.

• The Bakken is an oil field, not a "gas" field
• I never intended to post much on natural gas
• They say the "natural gas" portion of the Bakken only contributes about 4 percent of the overall hydrocarbon economic value

With all that in mind, it's amazing how much I have devoted to natural gas in the Bakken and how much has been posted so far. It seems to never end. Here's an excerpt from today's MDU's 3Q11 earnings announcement, sent to me by Don:

• The company continues to pursue expansion of facilities and services offered to customers. Energy development within its geographic region, which includes portions of Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota, is expanding, most notably the Bakken of North Dakota and eastern Montana. It owns an extensive natural gas pipeline system in the Bakken area. Ongoing energy development is expected to have many direct and indirect benefits to this business.
• Installation of additional compression at the Charbonneau station was completed and placed into service in September, providing additional firm capacity for producers in the Bakken production area. With some additional modifications, this project has the potential of adding a total of 27 MMcf of firm capacity.
• Construction has begun on approximately 12 miles of high pressure transmission pipeline providing takeaway capacity from the Garden Creek processing facility being constructed in northwestern North Dakota. The pipeline project is expected to be completed before year-end.
• Preparations are underway for the construction of approximately 13 miles of high pressure transmission pipeline from the Stateline I and II processing facilities in northwestern North Dakota to deliver gas into the Northern Border Pipeline. The project is expected to be completed by mid 2012.
• The company has three natural gas storage fields including the largest storage field in North America located near Baker, Montana. It continues to seek interest in its storage services and is pursuing a project to increase its firm deliverability from the Baker Storage field by 125 MMcf per day. Commitment on approximately 30 percent of the total potential project has been received. The additional firm deliverability is expected to be available in November. 

The Garden Creek, Stateline I,  and Stateline II processing plants are ONEOK plants that have been in the news lately. For photos of the Garden Creek under construction, go to the bottom of the blog and click on "CRYO" and scroll through the posts.

Again (I sound like a broken record), but if natural gas represents only four percent of the total hydrocarbon economic value in the Bakken, can you imagine what this all means?

And when I see "adding a total of 27 MMcf of firm capacity," I can put that into perspective, thanks to someone who has been sending me much information on ONEOK's involvement (see comments at the link above).