November 11, 2023 [JPT]- Houston-based Enterprise Products Partners is investing $3.1 billion into its natural gas liquids (NGL) operations, building a pipeline, adding new plants to process natural gas, and switching an oil pipeline back to an NGL pipeline.
The company said the projects will support the continuing production growth in the Permian Basin of west Texas and southeastern New Mexico. The company forecasts production growth in the prolific resource play to increase by more than 700,000 B/D in 2023 and grow by about 1.5 million B/D for a 3-year period ending in 2025.
Enterprise said it sees production growth increasing by up to another 15%, or greater than 1 million B/D by the end of 2030, with NGL production from the Permian potentially growing by more than 500,000 B/D to nearly 4 million B/D by the end of 2030.
Enterprise’s Co-Chief Executive Jim Teague said that the organic investments are needed to “facilitate the next phase of Permian production growth and will also complement our expansions of downstream pipelines and marine terminals to deliver energy products to growing domestic and international markets.”
The company will build the 550-mile-long Bahia NGL pipeline capable of transporting up to 600,000 B/D of NGLs from the Delaware and Midland basins to the company’s fractionation complex in Chambers County, Texas.
The pipeline includes a 24-in.-diameter segment from the Delaware Basin, connecting to a 30-in.-diameter segment from the Midland Basin to the fractionation complex. The wholly owned pipeline could begin operation in the first half of 2025, the company said.
To provide incremental NGL transportation service until the Bahia Pipeline is completed, the company said it initiated a conversion of the Seminole Pipeline, which carries up to 210,000 B/D of crude oil, back to NGL service in December 2023.
The pipeline began transporting crude oil in the second quarter of 2019 and was then known as the company’s Midland-to-ECHO 2 crude oil pipeline. Before 2019, the Seminole Red Pipeline was in NGL service, the company said.
Enterprise is also building two natural gas processing plants and a fractionation unit. The natural gas processing plants—the Mentone 4 and the Orion—will service the Delaware and Midland basins, respectively. Construction has begun on both plants, with each having the capacity to process more than 300 MMcf/D of natural gas to extract more than 40,000 B/D of NGLs.
The company is adding a fractionation unit at its Chambers County complex. The plant will have the capacity to fractionate up to 195,000 B/D of NGLs, and a new deisobutanizer unit will be able to separate up to 100,000 B/D of butanes.
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