Monday, April 13, 2015

Active rigs:

	4/13/2015	04/13/2014	04/13/2013	04/13/2012	04/13/2011
Active Rigs	93	189	186	208	173

RBN Energy: five Marcellus / Utica midstream players.

MarkWest Energy Partners is clearly the big dog in the Marcellus/Utica, with by far the largest gas processing and fractionation capacity there. But several other significant players in the region--Blue Racer Midstream, Utica East Ohio Midstream, Williams Partners and Pennant Midstream among them—have also been developing the region’s midstream infrastructure, enabling producers to ramp up their output of natural gas and NGLs. Today we continue our review of NGL-related assets in the Upper Ohio River Valley with a look at five additional midstream companies in the hunt. 

Producer interest in the Marcellus in southwestern Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia and in the Utica in eastern Ohio has been rising quickly since 2011--and it’s expected to continue as more take-away capacity for natural gas and NGL comes online, offering producers access to markets as far away as Texas. In our series on the region’s NGL-related infrastructure, we’ve describe the region’s history and hydrocarbon potential generally (in Episode 1) and in more detail (Episode 2). 

Next, (in Episode 3) we discussed the eight major pipelines that move natural gas through and out of the region; considered the gas processing and fractionation assets of MarkWest (Episode 4 and Episode 5); and described the pipeline interconnections between MarkWest’s eight (and soon nine) gas/NGL complexes in the region—and then explained how the elements of MarkWest’s “machine” are designed to function efficiently, even in the event of NGL-takeaway disruptions (Episode 6). In our last blog in this series, we started our look at other providers of midstream services in the Marcellus/Utica by considering the assets of Blue Racer, a joint venture of Caiman Energy II and Dominion (Episode 7). This time, we look at the remaining players in the region and list their gas processing plants, fractionators, and NGL pipelines that link those facilities to the outside world.

In addition to its 49% stake in UEO (thanks to its February 2015 merger with Access Midstream), Williams Partners owns 100% of Appalachian Midstream, which operates (and owns between one-third and two-thirds of) 11 natural gas gathering systems in the Marcellus—some in the dry-gas part of the Marcellus in northeastern Pennsylvania and some in the wet-gas part in southwestern Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia. Appalachian Midstream also owns the gas processing plants and pipelines shown in the southeastern part of Figure #1 [at the linked article]. The company’s 700 MMcf/d of gas processing capacity is split between two sites in Marshall County, WV--500 MMcf/d at Fort Beeler and 200 MMcf/d at Oak Grove—that together can produce up to 87 Mb/d of mixed, y-grade NGLs (blue dots). Its fractionation assets include a 40 Mb/d de-ethanizer at Oak Grove (green dot); the residual mixed NGLs then is fractionated at Williams’ 42 Mb/d C3+ fractionator at Moundsville—also in Marshall County (orange dot). Ethane separated out at Oak Grove is delivered to market via Williams’ 50-mile, 12-inch-diameter Ohio Valley Ethane Pipeline (OEVP, green line) from Oak Grove to MarkWest’s NGL hub at Houston, PA (shown in black since it is not owned by UEO). From there, ethane can flow into Mariner East, Mariner West and/or ATEX. 

We should note that Williams Partners holds a 58% stake in Caiman II, which owns half of Blue Racer. In Episode 7 we covered how Blue Racer moves ethane from its Natrium complex to Oak Grove via a 15-mile (Blue Racer-owned) ethane-only pipeline, and that from there the ethane moves to Houston (PA) via Williams’ OEVP.

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NOG

NOG press release: Northern Oil and Gas, Inc. today announced that its bank syndicate group reaffirmed and maintained the existing $550 million borrowing base under Northern's revolving credit facility during the semi-annual redetermination period.

Comment: this is in-line with earlier posts on "redeterminations."