The activities under the proposed plan includes construction of a new 570-plus-mile, 16-inch diameter natural gas liquids (NGL) pipeline, the Sterling III Pipeline, to transport either unfractionated NGLs or NGL purity products from the Mid-Continent region to the Texas Gulf Coast.
The construction of this Sterling III Pipeline will cost approximately $610 to $810m.
The pipeline will have an initial capacity to transport 193,000 bpd of either unfractionated NGLs or NGL purity products from the partnership’s NGL infrastructure at Medford, to its storage and fractionation facilities at Mont Belvieu.
The existing Sterling I and II NGL distribution pipelines will be reconfigured to transport either unfractionated NGLs or NGL purity products.
The company also plans to build a new 75,000bpd NGL fractionator, MB-2, at Mont Belvieu, Texas, with an approximate cost of $300 to $390m.
ONEOK Partners chief operating officer Terry Spencer said these projects will accommodate the growing NGL supplies in the Mid-Continent and elsewhere and help alleviate the infrastructure constraints between the Mid-Continent and Gulf Coast markets, while meeting the requirements of natural gas processors and NGL customers.
Supply commitments, which are in various stages of negotiation for both the new pipeline and fractionator, will be anchored by NGL production from third-party processors.
