(Source: Business Wire)
Enterprise Products Partners L.P. (NYSE:EPD) today announced that initial volumes of natural gas have begun flowing into its new Central Treating Facility (CTF) in Rio Blanco County, Colorado, which was completed in the fourth quarter of 2008. Located approximately eight miles south of the partnership's Meeker natural gas processing complex, the CTF has a capacity of 200 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of natural gas and is dedicated to ExxonMobil's nearby properties in the Piceance Basin, which are currently producing approximately 100 MMcf/d of natural gas.
"We are very pleased to work with ExxonMobil to build this facility, which was completed ahead of schedule and on budget," said Michael A. Creel, Enterprise president and chief executive officer. "The CTF provides the necessary services to support ExxonMobil's Piceance Project, its largest, land-based drilling program in North America. This initiative complements our recently completed Meeker II expansion, which doubles natural gas processing capacity of the complex and builds upon our strategy of extending Enterprise's integrated value chain strategy to provide producers with valuable midstream infrastructure to help them achieve their operational objectives."
Natural gas delivered to the CTF is treated to remove impurities and compressed for transportation to Meeker, where Enterprise will have the option to utilize its stand-alone 200 MMcf/d dew point control plant for processing, or route the natural gas through one of Enterprise's larger cryogenic processing units. With the recent completion of Phase II, the cryogenic processing capacity of the Meeker complex is now 1.5 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d), allowing it to extract as much as 70,000 barrels per day of natural gas liquids (NGLs). The separation of NGLs, including ethane, propane, butanes and natural gasoline, makes the processed natural gas acceptable for delivery into one of several interstate transmission pipelines accessible to producers through the White River Hub, which is jointly owned by Enterprise and Questar Pipeline Company. Utilizing Enterprise's Mid-America Pipeline and Seminole systems, the NGLs extracted at the Meeker complex can be delivered to the partnership's Hobbs and Mont Belvieu, Texas fractionation facilities.
Meeker and the new CTF are prominent features of a 30-year midstream services agreement Enterprise has entered into with ExxonMobil, which has estimated 45 trillion cubic feet of potential natural gas resources on its acreage in the Piceance Basin.
