CenterPoint Energy Field Services Inc. (CEFS) late Wednesday said it will provide long-term natural gas gathering and treating services to subsidiaries of EnCana Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell plc for their Haynesville Shale production.

The CenterPoint Energy Inc. subsidiary, which obtained agreements with EnCana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. and Shell subsidiary SWEPI LP, also bought for an undisclosed sum the two producers’ gathering facilities in De Soto and Red River parishes in northwest Louisiana.

C. Gregory Harper, group president of CenterPoint Energy’s pipelines and field services group, said the agreements offer “significant growth opportunities” for CEFS. “It extends our footprint in north Louisiana…gives us a platform for scalable growth and positions us to be a significant participant in providing natural gas gathering services in this important producing region.”

CEFS plans to expand the newly acquired gathering facilities to more than 100 MMcf/d, which would allow it to gather and treat up to 700 MMcf/d. CEFS also could expand its facilities if EnCana or Shell agreed. Volume commitments also were included in the agreements, but the amounts were not disclosed.

To increase the acquired facilities’ throughput to 700 MMcf/d, CEFS plans to spend $300-325 million to add more than 200 miles of pipelines, nearly 25,500 hp of compression and more than 800 MMcf/d of treating capacity. If Shell or EnCana agreed to expand the facilities in the future, CEFS said it could invest “as much as $250 to $300 million for additional facilities.

CEFS now owns and operates 3,600 miles of gathering pipelines and processing plants that collect, treat and process gas from about 150 separate systems in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. CEFS gathers about 1.3 Bcf/d and directly or through its 50% interest in a joint venture processes more than 240 MMcf/d along its gathering system.

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