MarkWest Energy is the biggest midstream company (pipelines and processing plants) in the Marcellus Shale. They’ve also set their sights on becoming the biggest midstream player in the Utica Shale, and they’re well on their way. Yesterday, MarkWest announced their joint venture with EMG, called MarkWest Utica, will build a third cryogenic gas processing plant at its Seneca processing complex in Noble County, Ohio. The new plant, which will add an additional 200 million cubic feet per day of capacity (MMcf/d), is scheduled to be completed in about a year and will service wet gas from Antero Resources’ Utica Shale wells. The first two Seneca plants will be online later this year.
Apparently MarkWest has cleared up any funding issues for building the new plant. Previously the MarkWest Utica jv ran low on money while building the first two Seneca plants and scrambled to get more cash, which they did in February (see MarkWest: We Just Banked $450M from EMG, Another $2.8B Available). Funding problems seem to be behind them now and it’s full speed ahead. Here’s the MarkWest press release which also gives a quick update on their Cadiz processing plant along with a fairly complete list of their customers for all of their Utica processing plants:
