Enterprise Products Partners to build Shin Oak NGL pipeline

Enterprise Products Partners plans to construct the Shin Oak natural gas liquids (NGL) pipeline to transport growing volumes of NGLs from the Permian Basin to the company’s fractionation and storage complex in Mont Belvieu, Texas.

The 571-mile-long Shin Oak pipeline will originate at Enterprise’s Hobbs NGL fractionation and storage facility in Gaines County, Texas. The 24-in. diameter pipeline will have an initial design capacity of 250,000 barrels per day (bpd), expandable to 600,000 bpd. The project is supported by long-term customer commitments and is expected to be in service in the second quarter of 2019, according to Enterprise.

In addition to mixed NGL supplies aggregated at the Hobbs facility, the Shin Oak pipeline will provide takeaway capacity for mixed NGLs extracted at natural gas processing plants in the Permian region, including two Enterprise facilities that began service in 2016 and the Orla I plant that is scheduled to begin operations in the second quarter of 2018. Along with Enterprise’s existing NGL pipelines, this new pipeline will also increase the company’s capacity to transport purity NGL products from Hobbs to Mont Belvieu.

“The Permian Basin is currently the hottest play in North America and is expected to continue its strong growth for years to come,” says A.J. Teague, CEO of Enterprise’s general partner. “The Shin Oak pipeline project is part of Enterprise’s larger plans in the Permian to leverage our integrated midstream assets to link supplies of cost-advantaged U.S. hydrocarbons to the largest domestic and global NGL markets. This additional pipeline takeaway capacity to Mont Belvieu would provide Permian producers the flow assurance they need to continue the unfettered development of their reserves with confidence.”