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Williams Invests $380M in New Utica Shale Midstream Project

Midstream behemoth Williams announced today it is investing $380 million in the new Blue Racer Midstream venture in the Utica Shale. The investment is part of Williams’ ongoing joint venture with Caiman Energy II (Willams owns 47.5%), which concentrates on developing midstream projects in the Utica Shale region.

Today’s Williams announcement:

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Williams Does Second Midstream Deal with Caiman Energy

Midstream giant Williams Partners continues an aggressive push into the Marcellus and Utica Shale and continues to cozy up with Caiman Energy as well. Yesterday Williams announced it will contribute $380 million toward a new $800 million joint venture with Caiman and several other partners to develop pipelines and processing facilities for natural gas, natural gas liquids and oil in the Utica Shale region of northeast Ohio and northwest Pennsylvania.

Earlier this year Williams spent $2.5 billion to purchase Caiman subsidiary Caiman Eastern Midstream, giving Williams a major midstream presence in the Marcellus/Utica region in northern West Virginia, southwestern Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio (see this MDN story). The recurring theme for Williams’ latest jv and acquisitions seems to be, “Get thee to the wet gas.”

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Williams Buys Caiman Eastern Midstream for $2.5 Billion

Williams announced yesterday that it will buy Caiman Energy subsidiary Caiman Eastern Midstream for $2.5 billion. Caiman Midstream has a major presence in the wet gas area of the Marcellus and Utica Shale play. The acquisition will give Williams a major pipeline gathering network in northern West Virginia, southwestern Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, along with two processing facilities and a fractionator. Williams says by 2020 the Caiman system will be gathering more than 2 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas along with 300,000 barrels per day of natural gas liquids and condensate.

In addition to the acquisition, the Caiman Energy parent company will partner with Williams in a new joint venture to further develop new midstream infrastructure in the Utica Shale. From the Williams press release:

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Caiman Energy Investing $1.3B in Midstream Facilities in WV

Caiman Energy plans to bring its total investment in natural gas processing (“midstream”) facilities in Marshall County, WV to $1.3 billion by the end of 2014. At midstream processing plants like the ones operated by Caiman, raw natural gas is processed to separate out methane from other components like ethane, propane, butane and pentane, or “natural gas liquids.” The liquids are sent to another facility for fractionation, to separate them from one another. Ethane then goes to a cracker plant where it is “cracked” or transformed into ethylene, used for making plastics.

Caiman is expanding its current processing facilities and building a new fractionation facility in Marshall County and spending nearly as much on their projects ($1.3 billion) as the much anticipated cracker plant that will be built by Shell somewhere in the Marcellus Shale region ($1.5-$2.0 billion).

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Energy Company Takes to the Sky to Move Utility Poles

Caiman Energy has found a novel way of moving large steel utility poles (electric poles) that it needs to install to bring in more power to a natural gas processing plant located at Fort Beeler near Cameron (Marshall County), WV. To address concerns over truck traffic and damage to roads, Caiman is using helicopters to shuttle the utility poles.

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