Calgary-based Aux Sable Liquid Products LP plans to spend $130 million to increase processing capabilities at its facilities in Channahon, IL.

Aux Sable has long partnered with Alliance Pipeline (see Shale Daily, May 4, 2012) to get western Canadian and Bakken Shale supplies into its facilities southeast of Chicago, which have the capability now of processing up to 2.1 Bcf/d of natural gas and 107,000 b/d of natural gas liquids (NGL).

The planned expansion, which is scheduled to be completed in mid-2016, would increase the fractionation capacity of the Illinois extraction and fractionation facilities by 24,500 b/d. It would also expand the NGL production capacity to 131,500 b/d, the company said.

For several years Aux Sable has gone after processing and pipeline assets in the Bakken to become a major player in the processing of natural gas and NGLs in the Upper Midwest. This included its purchase three years ago of the Stanley Condensate Recovery Plant and Prairie Rose Pipeline from a unit of EOG Resources Inc. (see Shale Daily, June 7, 2011).

Aux Sable provides market access to rich gas producers in Canada and the United States, which it contends cannot be realized through conventional field extraction and local NGL sales. “The success of our rich gas premium strategy, coupled with increasingly liquids-rich gas supplies coming from the unconventional Bakken, Duvernay and Montney plays, has resulted in higher heat content gas arriving at the inlet of our extraction and fractionation facilities,” said CEO Tim Stauft. The expansion will allow Aux Sable to handle additional liquids-rich gas for which it has contracts after 2015, he said.