Reported by CEN West Slope Staff

Enterprise Products Partners reports that initial volumes of natural gas have begun flowing into the new central treating facility (CTF) the company owns and operates in Rio Blanco County, Colorado. The facility was completed late last year.

Located about 8 miles south of Enterprise’s recently expanded Meeker gas processing complex, the CTF can handle as much as 200 MMcfd as well as production from ExxonMobil’s properties in nearby Piceance basin. Production from those, according to the Enterprise announcement, is currently running about 100 MMcfd.

“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. Total natural gas production among all the producers in the basin, which covers more than 6,000 square miles, currently exceeds 1.5 Bcf/d from more than 6,000 wells. Additionally, production has been growing at an annualized rate averaging approximately 23 percent over the past six years and continues to support sustainable drilling activities.

Total gas production among all the producers in the basin, which covers more than 6,000 square miles, currently exceeds 1.5 bcfd from more than 6,000 wells, said the company. Additionally, production has been growing at about 23%/year over the past 6 years and continues to support sustainable drilling activities.