XTO starts western Pennsylvania NGL recovery

June 19, 2013
ExxonMobil Corp. unit XTO Energy Inc. has placed its natural gas liquids recovery plant in Butler County, Pa., into service. The 125-MMcfd Butler plant is XTO’s first in the Appalachia region, sits on 340 acres, and includes 40 miles of connecting pipeline.

ExxonMobil Corp. unit XTO Energy Inc. has placed its natural gas liquids recovery plant in Butler County, Pa., into service. The 125-MMcfd Butler plant is XTO’s first in the Appalachia region, sits on 340 acres, and includes 40 miles of connecting pipeline. Two gas compressor stations feed the Butler plant.

In July 2012, MarkWest Energy Partners LP executed a long-term, fee-based agreement with XTO to extend MarkWest’s NGL gathering pipeline in northwestern Pennsylvania to XTO’s Butler County plant. MarkWest previously announced an extension of its Marcellus NGL gathering pipeline north from its Houston, Pa., NGL fractionation and marketing complex to the Bluestone processing complex, also in Butler County, which MarkWest acquired in June 2012. The July agreement further extended the NGL gathering pipeline from Bluestone to the XTO plant.

XTO says it has drilled 50 wells in Butler County over the past 4 years, covering more than 46,000 net acres.

The company last year signed an anchor producer agreement to supply natural gas to NiSource Gas Transmission & Storage Midstream Services’ Big Pine Gathering System in western Pennsylvania. Big Pine interconnects with Columbia Gas Transmission, Texas Eastern, and Dominion (OGJ Online, Apr. 5, 2012).

Contact Christopher E. Smith at [email protected].