Enbridge

A summer of dueling over services and tolls on the crowded eastern end of TransCanada Corp.’s natural gas Mainline ended Friday in a deal to eliminate the cause of the fight by adding capacity.

After capturing a healthy and growing share of Canadian natural gas consumption with shale production from the United States, exploration and production companies are poised to repeat the feat in oil markets.

Enbridge Energy Partners LP plans to construct a 150 MMcf/d cryogenic gas processing plant near Beckville in Panola County, TX, that would expand the partnership’s processing capacity to 820 MMcf/d in the Cotton Valley and Haynesville Shale regions. The plant, expected to cost $140 million, is to be located in the heart of the rich gas Cotton Valley, would interconnect with existing natural gas liquids infrastructure. Construction is to begin late this year with start-up in early 2015.

Enbridge Energy Partners LP said it will construct a 150 MMcf/d cryogenic gas processing plant on its Anadarko gas gathering system near Wheeler, TX. The $230 million Ajax plant would serve growing production from the Granite Wash play and is expected to be in service by early 2013. The plant would bring total Anadarko System processing capacity to 1.2 Bcf/d, the partnership said. The Anadarko System consists of about 2,800 miles of gas gathering and transportation pipelines in southwest Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle, one gas treating plant and 12 gas processing plants, including the planned Ajax and previously announced Allison plants.

The North American gas transmission and distribution (T&D) industry looks healthy for the rest of this year and into 2008, but the credit crunch threatens to slow down capital spending and the acquisition market, according to Moody’s Investors Service.

After finding “robust” interest in its proposed Phase II expansion, Vector Pipeline LP., a joint venture between Calgary-based Enbridge Inc. (60% interest) and Detroit-based DTE Energy Co. (40% interest), announced last week that it will formally request permission from FERC to expand its mainline natural gas transmission pipeline for the second time in two years.

After finding “robust” interest in its proposed Phase II expansion, Vector Pipeline LP., a joint venture between Calgary-based Enbridge Inc. (60% interest) and Detroit-based DTE Energy Co. (40% interest), announced Wednesday that it will formally request permission from FERC to expand its mainline natural gas transmission pipeline for the second time in two years.

Enbridge Energy Partners agreed to sell 627 miles of gas gathering, 121 miles of intrastate pipeline and five gas treating plants in Texas and Oklahoma for $106 million to San Antonio-based TexStar Field Services LP. The sale is expected to close in the fourth quarter. The assets included 327 miles of gas gathering pipeline, 121 miles of transmission pipeline and a gas treating facility located in South Texas. Also included is a 300-mile northeastern Texas gas and products gathering system, the Eustace gas processing and treating plant and three other gas treating facilities.

Doug Krenz, vice president of transportation for Enbridge, was misidentified as an Enterprise Products Partners executive in an article that ran in NGI’s Daily Gas Price Index on Oct. 13 (see Daily GPI, Oct. 13). NGI regrets the mistake and will run a corrected and updated version of the story in Natural Gas Intelligence, the weekly newsletter.