CGT, MarkWest report Appalachian expansion

Oct. 24, 2008
Columbia Gas Transmission and MarkWest Energy intend to jointly expand gas gathering and processing services to support increased production volumes in the Appalachian basin of central West Virginia.

Christopher E. Smith
Pipeline Editor

HOUSTON, Oct. 24 -- NiSource Inc. unit Columbia Gas Transmission Corp. and MarkWest Energy Partners LP intend to jointly expand natural gas gathering and processing services to support increased production volumes in the Appalachian basin of central West Virginia.

The two companies also are discussing plans with several gas producers to provide new gathering and processing services near Columbia's Cobb aggregation system in Kanawha, Jackson, and Roane counties, W.Va.

The expansion of services includes MarkWest's previously announced expansion of its Cobb gas processing plant, increasing total capacity to about 70 MMcfd from the current 25 MMcfd by mid-2009. NGLs recovered at Cobb will continue to be fractionated at MarkWest's Siloam fractionation, marketing, and storage complex in South Shore, Ky., currently in the final stages of its own expansion. Siloam can currently fractionate 600,000 gpd of propane, butane, and natural gasoline and has 11 million gal of cavern propane storage.

Columbia will add horsepower to its existing Cobb compressor station and install new field gathering and compression facilities to bring new production to the Cobb processing plant. Further incremental additions of horsepower and capacity remain possible as warranted by production increases.

These expansion plans follow an August 2008 announcement by the two companies to expand similar services near Majorsville, W.Va., serving the northern panhandle area of West Virginia and western Pennsylvania.

Contact Christopher E. Smith at [email protected].