Oneok Partners LP has plans to construct natural gas midstream infrastructure in south-central Oklahoma, an area where the Mississippian Lime intersects with the Woodford Shale, aka the South Central Oklahoma Oil Province (SCOOP).

The partnership expects to invest $365-470 million to the end of 2016 to build various gas infrastructure in Oklahoma’s Grady and Stephens counties, including the Knox plant, a proposed 200 MMcf/d processing facility.

“The Knox plant in Oklahoma will increase our presence in the growing SCOOP play and increase our Oklahoma natural gas processing capacity to approximately 900 MMcf/d,” said partnership CEO Terry K. Spencer.

Including expansions and upgrades to existing gas gathering systems and compression, everything should be done within two years, he said. The investment would include $175-240 million to build the plant and $190-230 million to construct related infrastructure.

Knox would be the partnership’s first plant in the SCOOP to process gas from secured acreage dedications. The facility is to be “located in close proximity to the partnership’s existing natural gas and natural gas liquids pipelines,” Spencer said.

The stacked region where the Knox facility would be built is known by various monikers, basically referring to a wide region that extends into Kansas (see Shale Daily, April 11). SCOOP first was coined by Continental Resources Inc., while Central Northern Oklahoma Woodford, or CNOW, is credited to American Energy Partners LP (AELP) CEO Aubrey McClendon; STACK is used by Newfield Exploration Co. (see Shale Daily, Feb. 25).

Competition for gas midstream services in the region includes a plan proposed in June by Tall Oak Midstream LLC, which said it wants to build a system also to serve producers that are targeting the Mississippian, Woodford and Cleveland formations (see Shale Daily, June 25). Tall Oak would be anchored by a long-term dedication from AELP’s Woodford entity, which includes close to one million acres. The system plans to have direct access to markets that include the Southern Star Central Gas Pipeline and Enable Gas Transmission.