The storage will be made available through a natural gas liquids storage facility (the Mountaineer NGL Storage Project) in Monroe County, Ohio, near Clarington, Ohio, along the Ohio River.

Mountaineer NGL Storage, is a Denver, Colo.-based privately held energy company that develops, owns and operates the Mountaineer NGL Storage Project. Mountaineer is owned by its management team and has a project development agreement with private equity sponsor West Street Energy Partners, an investment fund managed by the Goldman, Sachs & Co.

The open season began on Monday, April 11, 2016, and will conclude at 5:00 p.m. Central Time on May 9, 2016.

The Mountaineer NGL Storage Project will use the subsurface Salina salt formation as the storage zone. It intends to provide storage services to a growing number of gas processors, producers, markets and commodity traders that are interested in exploiting the wet gas production from the Marcellus/Utica shales.

The project will be designed to store ethane, propane, butane and y-grade products. It will offer a highly flexible service that can be specifically tailored to each customer’s needs, providing an on-demand asset to help manage strategic liquids requirements.

“The Marcellus shale and the Utica shale below it have surprised the entire industry and are fast becoming the next super-producers of natural gas supply in this country, but there is a dire need for reliable storage solutions,” said David Hooker, managing director of Mountaineer NGL Storage.

“This project will be strategically located to provide service to the expanding network of pipelines, rail and barge infrastructure that is currently being built to transport Marcellus and Utica natural gas liquids to markets throughout the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Mid-Continent and Gulf Coast,” he said.

Mountaineer NGL Storage did not offer a project completion date.