Summit Midstream Partners to buy Marcellus gathering assets

June 5, 2013
Summit Midstream Partners LP agreed to buy certain gas gathering assets from MarkWest Energy Partners LP in Doddridge County, W.Va., for $210 million.

Summit Midstream Partners LP agreed to buy certain gas gathering assets from MarkWest Energy Partners LP in Doddridge County, W.Va., for $210 million.

Closing is expected by June 30. The transaction involves more than 40 miles of high-pressure gas gathering pipelines, certain rights-of-way associated with the pipeline, and two compressor stations totaling more than 21,000 hp of combined compression.

The rich-gas gathering and compression system is supported by a long-term, fee-based contract with an affiliate of Antero Resources Corp., the anchor producer at MarkWest’s Sherwood processing complex.

Antero holds more than 312,000 net acres in the southwestern Marcellus. The company has 14 drilling rigs running in northern West Virginia, and it has access to 400 MMcfd of cryogenic processing capacity at the Sherwood complex.

Proceeds from this transaction will provide MarkWest with financial flexibility to help finance more than 18 previously announced major midstream infrastructure projects primarily in the Marcellus and Utica shales.

By the end of 2014, MarkWest is expected to have more than 4 bcfd of processing capacity and 275,000 b/d of fractionation capacity in those two plays. MarkWest is a master limited partnership having gathering, processing, and transportation assets in the Marcellus, Utica, Huron-Berea, Haynesville, and Woodford shales.