Penn Virginia Resource Partners LP (PVR) said late Monday it would be able to increase its natural gas processing capabilities in western Oklahoma after acquiring processing and residue pipeline facilities from Atlas Pipeline Partners LP (APL) for $22.6 million in cash.

The acquired and expanded processing facilities would increase PVR Midstream’s processing capacity in the Panhandle System to 260 MMcf/d and overall processing capacity to 400 MMcf/d.

The transaction and expansion increases “our processing capacity by one-third and considerably enhances our largest system, positioning us to meet our producers’ current and future gathering and processing needs,” said PVA CEO A. James Dearlove.

The acquired assets include a 60 MMcf/d processing plant within APL’s 180 MMcf/d Sweetwater facility in Beckham County, OK. APL would continue to operate the facilities, PVR said. The facility is expected to begin processing PVR’s gas by the end of August after system connections and field compression are installed, which the company estimated would cost an additional $5 million.

In addition, a 40 MMcf/d processing plant expansion of PVR’s Panhandle system is scheduled to ramp up by the end of this month, the company said.

The increased processing capacity would allow the PVR Midstream unit to process an additional 50 MMcf/d of gas volumes that were being bypassed because of processing capacity constraints in the Panhandle system, the company said. The new capacity also would alleviate pipeline pressure-related volume constraints in the eastern portion of the Panhandle system.

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