Bear Den II Begins Operations

Crestwood Equity Partners LP has recently begun commercial operations at the Bear Den II processing plant in Watford City, N.D. Concurrently, Crestwood brought online the Station 8 Compression Facility, a 27,500 hp electric driven trunkline compression station, and expanded the Bear Den West and Bear Den Loop pipelines, 36 miles of 20 in. high pressure lines that connect the Bear Den processing complex to the Arrow gathering system.

Crestwood said new gathering records are being set on the Arrow system as a result of debottlenecking projects, increasing initial production rates and reservoir productivity. In August, daily gathering volumes have exceeded 96 mmcf/d of natural gas, 124 mbbls/d of crude oil and 84 mbbls/d of produced water. Crestwood now expects Arrow producers to connect 110 new wells this year and the company said it has has successfully negotiated contract extensions with active producers on the Arrow system resulting in an average remaining term of 9.3 years.

Robert G. Phillips, chairman, president, and CEO of Crestwood said that “the startup of the Bear Den II plant is a key milestone in our long-term Bakken growth strategy to provide our producers with exceptional customer service and flow assurance for their growing production on the Arrow gathering system. Our project management, operations, safety, environmental and technical services teams did a tremendous job to place these vital infrastructure projects into service with excellent safety records during construction.”

The Bear Den II plant is a 120 mmcf/d cryogenic processing plant located adjacent to Crestwood’s 30 mmcf/d Bear Den I plant which was placed into service last year. During its startup phase, Bear Den II is currently processing approximately 65 mmcf/d of natural gas with the expectation to ramp up to 100% of Arrow’s gas gathering volumes during the third quarter. The Bear Den processing complex has downstream connections to Northern Border Pipeline Co. for residue gas and upon its completion, will connect to ONEOK’s Elk Creek pipeline for NGL takeaway.

The Arrow gathering and processing system gathers natural gas, crude oil and produced water on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in McKenzie and Dunn counties in North Dakota. The Arrow system consists of approximately 740 miles of pipe, 150 mmcf/d of processing capacity, and over 75,000 hp of compression, that is supported by a 150,000 acre dedication and long-term contracts with WPX Energy, XTO Energy, Bruin E&P Partners, Rimrock Oil & Gas, Enerplus Resources, PetroShale and QEP Resources.