MarkWest Energy continues its Marcellus/Utica infrastructure expansion. In an announcement yesterday, MarkWest said they will build a fifth (!) 200 million cubic feet per day cryogenic gas processing plant at its Sherwood (Doddridge County), WV facility. In the latest edition of the Marcellus and Utica Shale Databook (2013 Volume 2), MDN lists all of the projects announced by MarkWest and others (111 projects in all). This one is brand new and would be 112. MDN estimates this new cryogenic processing plant along with two others currently under construction at the Sherwood complex cost in the neighborhood of $200 million each to build.
Cryogenic plants separate natural gas liquids (NGLs, or “wet gas”) from methane (“dry gas”). Why a fifth plant at the same facility? It’s being built at the request of Antero Resources. MarkWest signed a deal with Antero to provide them with wet gas processing capacity at the plant. MarkWest says the new plant will be built and online by third quarter of 2014. When it goes online, the total processing capacity at the Sherwood complex will be 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day–a really astonishing number. Here’s the MarkWest announcement:
