PBIOS - October 2018 - 137

Projects Build Out Gas, NGL Capacity
While Permian infrastructure headlines
are focused largely on crude oil takeaway capacity, in the multiphase world
of unconventional reservoirs, all the associated natural gas entrained in the
liquids is positioning the Permian as a
new epicenter of U.S. natural gas supply.
Rapidly expanding natural gas and
natural gas liquids volumes are spurring
a building boom in facilities to gather,
treat, process and transport dry gas and
NGLs. A case in point is a new Navitas
Midstream Midland Basin LLC cryogenic
processing plant in the core of Midland
Basin tight oil plays. Located in Glasscock
County near Navitas' Newberry processing
complex, the 200 million cubic feet a
day plant will expand the company's total
Midland Basin processing capacity to
525 MMcf/d when completed in the second quarter of 2019, complementing its
1,600 miles of high- and low-pressure
gathering lines and 82,000 horsepower
of field compression.
R. Bruce Northcutt, chief executive
officer of Navitas, says the facility will
utilize a 35 MMcf/d nitrogen rejection
unit incorporating BCCK Holding Company's latest Style III Nitech® technology
to process gas with concentrated nitrogen
on the residue of the cryogenic plant.
"The Nitech process will enable us to
handle higher mole percentage (mole %)
nitrogen in our gas, which is important
to meeting downstream pipeline specifications," Northcutt explains. "We selected
BCCK for this project because of its
proven successful track record with the
technology."
Jacob Pratt, vice president of sales
and business development at BCCK, explains that Nitech technology is not constrained by low mole % nitrogen, which
prevents a recycle stream costing additional
operating expenditures. "Nitech can
process inlet gas to less than 1.0 mole %,
allowing BCCK to slipstream and reduce
CAPEX and OPEX requirements," he
states.
Alpine High
Of course, Apache's 336,000-net acre
Alpine High project in the Delaware
Basin has been one of the single largest
drivers of Permian gas and NGL infra-

structure development in recent months.
The latest news is a strategic agreement
between Apache and Kayne Anderson
Acquisition Corp. to form a new joint
partnership company, Altus Midstream,
to operate Alpine High gathering, processing and transportation assets.
Apache will own 71 percent of Altus
Midstream initially, with the ability to
increase to 74 percent. The partners project
that gross daily production volumes will
approach more than 1 billion cubic feet a
day of gas and 100,000 barrels of NGLs
by the end of 2020.
"The transaction with Kayne Anderson
Acquisition Corp. creates a premier midstream enterprise to service Alpine High,
an enormous, highly economic upstream
resource base in the Permian Basin, states
John Christmann IV, Apache's CEO and
president. "Alpine High contains more
than 5,000 feet of vertical hydrocarbonbearing formations across approximately
340,000 contiguous net acres.
"Since our discovery of Alpine High,
we have invested nearly $1 billion in an
extensive network of fit-for-purpose in-

frastructure to meet the current and future
processing and transport needs of the
play," Christmann continues. "This transaction facilitates the allocation of Apache's
capital to the development of the vast
Alpine High upstream resource base. In
turn, focused capital development in the
upstream should bring significant growth
to Altus Midstream for many years to
come."
In addition to the Alpine High operations, Altus Midstream will also own options for equity participation in five proposed gas, NGL and oil pipeline projects
from the Permian to various points along
the Texas Gulf Coast: Kinder Morgan's
Gulf Coast Express and Permian Highway
gas pipelines, Salt Creek Midstream's
Salt Creek NGL line, EPIC Midstream
Holdings' EPIC oil pipeline, and Enterprise
Products Partners' Shin Oak NGL system.
Gas, NGL Pipelines
The Permian Highway will transport
up to 2 Bcf/d of gas to the Texas Gulf
Coast. Developed in partnership between

Navitas Midstream Midland Basin LLC's 200 MMcf/d cryogenic processing plant in
Glasscock County, Tx., is scheduled to enter service in the second quarter of 2019. The
plant will utilize a 35 MMcf/d nitrogen rejection unit incorporating BCCK Holding Company's Style III Nitech® technology to process gas with high concentrations of nitrogen.

OCTOBER PBIOS 2018 137

PBIOS - October 2018

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