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Marshall County gas processor makes comeback

Intelligencer/Wheeling News-Register photo by Casey Junkins The Blue Racer Midstream Natrium plant in Marshall County can now process 400 million cubic feet of natural gas per day, which is double the amount it handled at the time of a September fire.
Intelligencer/Wheeling News-Register photo by Casey Junkins
The Blue Racer Midstream Natrium plant in Marshall County can now process 400 million cubic feet of natural gas per day, which is double the amount it handled at the time of a September fire.

KENT, W.Va. – More fractionation and de-ethanization is online in Marshall County’s Marcellus and Utica shale field, as Blue Racer Midstream can process 400 million cubic feet of natural gas per day at the Natrium facility along W.Va. 2.

The Blue Racer system features pipelines that carry natural gas under the Ohio River from the Buckeye State for processing at Natrium.

“Our assets are positioned exactly where our producers need them so that ultimately they achieve the best possible price realizations,” Jack Lafield, CEO of Blue Racer, said. “The Utica is a complex play with tremendous potential. Utica producers face a number of challenges, and we continue to build out a very large supersystem in the Utica to assist them.”

Dominion Resources developed the Natrium plant, while the full-time workers at Natrium are considered Dominion employees. However, Blue Racer now owns the facility as part of a $1.5 billion deal between Dominion and Caiman Energy.

Upon separation from the gas stream, the propane and butane are kept in tanks on the Natrium site to be marketed. This cannot be done with ethane because of the product’s volatility.

According to the company, Blue Racer’s ethane pipeline provides direct access to the Enterprise ATEX Pipeline, which sends ethane to the Gulf Coast. New pipeline infrastructure leading out of Natrium will connect to Sunoco’s Mariner West pipeline, which carriers ethane to Ontario, Canada for cracking at the Nova Chemicals Corunna petrochemical facility at Sarnia.

The original portion of the Blue Racer plant reopened in January after it was closed as a result of a Sept. 21 fire. W.Va. 2 near the Marshall and Wetzel county line was closed for nearly eight hours as the fire burned…

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