MarkWest to Build 5th Cryogenic Gas Processing Plant Plant in Doddridge County WV

MarkWest Energy continues its Marcellus/Utica infrastructure expansion. In an announcement yesterday, MarkWest said they will build a fifth (!) 200 million cubic feet per day cryogenic gas processing plant at its Sherwood (Doddridge County), WV facility. It is estimated that this new cryogenic processing plant, along with two others currently under construction at the Sherwood complex, will cost in the neighborhood of $200 million each to build.

Cryogenic plants separate natural gas liquids (wet gas) from methane (dry gas). Why a fifth plant at the same facility? It’s being built at the request of Antero Resources. MarkWest has signed a deal with Antero to provide them with additional wet gas processing capacity at the plant. MarkWest says the new plant will be built and online by third quarter of 2014. When it goes online, the total processing capacity at the Sherwood complex will be 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day–a really astonishing number and an incredible amount of polution for those downwind of the plant to contend with.