Under the agreement, Chesapeake will commit a significant quantity of natural gas production from multiple counties in South Texas over a 14-year term.
Eagle Ford Gathering will gather Chesapeake’s gas from major delivery points and provide transportation, processing and fractionation services.
The company’s previously announced 30-inch pipeline in the western Eagle Ford Shale play is under construction and is expected to begin full service in the third quarter of 2011.
Kinder Morgan and Copano will invest a total of approximately $175m to construct 111 miles of pipeline facilities to serve Eagle Ford Shale production from Chesapeake and from SM Energy, with which the JV executed a gas services agreement in July 2010.
Eagle Ford Gathering has 375,000mmbtu per day of firm capacity on Kinder Morgan’s intrastate pipeline from Laredo to Katy and 375,000mmbtu per day of firm processing capacity at Copano’s Houston Central processing plant.
Copano serves as operator and managing member of Eagle Ford Gathering.
