The buyouts keep on rolling in. Detroit-based DTE Energy announced yesterday they are buying 100% of M3 Midstream’s Appalachia Gathering System (AGS), located in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and 40% of M3’s Stonewall Gas Gathering (SGG), located in West Virginia. In addition DTE is buying another 15% of SGG owned by Vega Energy Partners. The combined deals will cost DTE $1.3 billion. Whew! Lots of moving parts in this story. Let’s sort it out. In April 2015 MDN told you that a section of M3 Midstream’s Appalachia Gathering System (AGS) had been spun off into its own company called Stonewall Gathering System (see M3’s New Stonewall Gathering System Extends Existing AGS in WV). At the time, plans were under way to build out gathering pipelines in West Virginia’s Harrison and Doddridge counties, running through Lewis and into Braxton County where the pipeline will connect with Columbia Transmission’s interstate pipeline. The plans came to fruition and the Stonewall Gathering System was built and now gathers 1 billion cubic feet of Marcellus Shale gas per day (see Construction on WV Stonewall Gather Pipeline Begins, Runs Thru Dec). Why does DTE want these two pipeline systems? Because they will provide a reliable source cheap, abundant, clean-burning Marcellus/Utica natural gas to DTE’s utility customers in the Midwest. These gathering systems already connect to the Columbia Gas Transmission and the Texas Eastern Transmission pipeline systems. They will also connect to the NEXUS Gas Transmission pipeline once it’s built…
