BP has committed all of its future gas production from the Southern Green Canyon area of the central Gulf of Mexico, including the Holstein, Mad Dog and Atlantis deepwater developments, to the Manta Ray Offshore Gathering and Nautilus Pipeline systems and the Neptune gas processing facilities. Enterprise Products Partners LP, Shell Gas Transmission and Marathon Oil own and operate the transportation and processing faculties and have signed a long-term deal with BP for various midstream services.

“We believe the Manta Ray-Nautilus-Neptune corridor maximizes the revenue for producers from their deepwater natural gas production in the central Gulf of Mexico by providing them access to the highest value natural gas and NGL markets on the Louisiana Gulf Coast,” said Doug Krenz, president of Shell Gas Transmission, the commercial operator of the Manta Ray and Nautilus pipeline systems.

Upon receipt of gas from the Cleopatra Gas Gathering System, a BP-developed pipeline, at Manta Ray’s Ship Shoal 332 platform, the gas will be transported on Manta Ray to the Ship Shoal 207 platform where it is delivered into the Nautilus pipeline system. From Ship Shoal 207, the 101-mile Nautilus pipeline will transport the gas to the Neptune gas processing plant, located in St. Mary’s Parish, LA. Enterprise owns a 25.67% equity interest in both the Manta Ray and Nautilus pipelines. Affiliates of Shell Gas Transmission and Marathon Oil own a 50% and 24.33% interest, respectively, in each of the two pipelines. Shell is the physical operator of Manta Ray and Marathon is the physical operator of Nautilus.

The Neptune plant has executed an agreement with BP to process its production to remove natural gas liquids. Enterprise owns a 66% equity interest in the Neptune facility and serves as the operator. Marathon owns the remaining 34%.

“Through our integrated NGL pipeline, fractionation and storage system, we can provide producers with the ability to take delivery of their blended or purity barrels of NGLs anywhere along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast, which is the largest consuming region of NGLs in the world,” said Enterprise CEO O.S. “Dub” Andras.

“These arrangements with BP effectively extend the reach of the Manta Ray-Nautilus-Neptune corridor in the central Gulf of Mexico. Today, natural gas deliveries available to Neptune already exceed its capacity of 300 MMcf/d. Given current production levels and expected growth from Southern Green Canyon and future deepwater developments in the central Gulf, we are planning to expand our Neptune facility by adding another 300 MMcf/d of capacity, enabling extraction of an incremental 25,000 b/d of NGLs. This expansion, which should be completed in 2003, will bring total plant capacity to 600 MMcf/d and 50,000 b/d of NGLs.”

After being processed at the Neptune plant, the natural gas will be redelivered into the Nautilus hub, which currently has six interconnects with intrastate and interstate natural gas pipelines. A seventh interconnect, a 250 MMcf/d connection with Tennessee Gas Pipeline, is expected to be completed by the end of the year. Two of the interconnects at the hub are with Enterprise affiliates, Acadian Gas Pipeline and Cypress Gas Pipeline, which are Louisiana intrastate pipelines that give producers and marketers access to large industrial customers and gas and electric distribution companies. In addition, new markets for gas are developing in areas served by these pipeline systems, as seven power generation projects are currently under development and four more are in the planning stage.

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