Ethane Power Plant "Slated" For Williston Area -- Sources -- January 14, 2021

Updates
January 15, 2021: press release, dated January 12, 2021, from Bismarck, ND, and Westlake Village, CA, data points:

• Bakken Midstream Natural Gas, LLC
• has signed its first ethane supply term sheet to support the power plant previously announced
• will be the largest power plant to utilize advances in combustion turbine technology that enables ethane as its primary fuel source;
• The Energy Center: to be located in the Mountrail-Williams Electric Cooperative near Williston, ND
• October, 2020: announced it had secured nearly $25 million from two separate capital raises
• funding rounds led by the Family Office of Founder and executive chairman, Steven E Lebow
• Lebo was joined by ND business leaders including Gene Nicholas, Ron D. Offutt, and Stephen L. Stenehjem
• Lebow, previously: 
• founded and co-led Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette's (DLJ) Los Angeles office and created and led GRP Partners, a US and European venture capital firm;
• from day one, he was the primary fanancier for companies including Costco Wholesale, PetSmart, Dick's Sporting Goods, Envestnet, Bill Me Later (sold to PayPal) and ULTA Beauty;
• three years of preparation and work to get to this point
• Bakken Midstream: 
• CEO Mike Hopkins
• Lebow, and co-founders Curt Launer and Shane Goettle
• Hopkins:
• has successfully developed 54 power projects around the world, totaling over twelve gigawatts
• was extensively involved in the build out of the value-added industry in Alberta, Canada
• Launer:
• number-one ranked natural gas industry analyst on Wall Street for twelve years
• in the Institutional Investor Magazine Hall of Fame
• Goettle:
• life-long North Dakota businessman and attorney with more than 25 years of state and federal level experience;
• former head of the North Dakota Department of Commerce
• former chair of EmPower North Dakota

Original Post

Link here. 

Bismarck Tribune link here. 

Williston Herald link here.

From The Bismarck Tribune, data points:

• west of Williston
• Bakken Midstream Natural Gas
• $400-million facility
• construction: to begin in 2022
• to take two years
• CEO: Mike Hopkins
• Bakken Midsream
• formed in 2018
• mission: to develop "such" projects
• received a $200,000 investment from ND Department of Commerce
• confidentiality precludes more specific information
  

Hope springs eternal. The big question: where was MDU all these years? Why does it take an upstart to get this going? Why not Hess? Why not NDREC. By 2010 "everyone" was aware of the flaring issue. So, now, some fourteen years later, maybe a new power plant. 

Questions unanswered that would seen not to be confidentiality issues:

• what is meant by "large"? in terms of households, how "large"?
• CO2 offsets;
• wholesale price of energy produced?
• what permits yet required? any Federal permits required?
• co-owned by a "utility partner"?
• what is meant by "significant amount of construction jobs"
• any other public grants other than the $200,000 mentioned? 
• what percent of produced ethane will actually be processed by this plant?  
• are there any other such plants in the US that might provide readers some comparison? Pennsylvania Power Plant said to be the first to tap ethane for electricity -- March 27, 2020 -- NGI, link here; proposed as long ago as 2015 by GE, link here;

EIA: costs for new energy plants, 2018, link here. 

• average construction costs, combined cycle: $900 / kW = $900,000 / mW or about a million dollars for a new combined cycle plant;
• average new capacity for a new natural gas plant: 500 MW
• so, 500 megawatts x one million dollars = $500 million 

Hess natural gas processing plant: $150 million, link here. 

Hess Vantage pipeline: link here.