Our Tulsa office is all a tither with news that our neighbor, midstream giant ONEOK, has made Permian gravy with an acquisition that couldn’t be timelier. As more pipelines in the Permian come online to unleash near record level output of residual natural gas, producers clamoring for more infrastructure have shifted from a cry to a holler for more processing.

Reese Energy Consulting today is following the $4.43 billion all-cash deal between ONEOK and Fort Worth-based Brazos Midstream. For a little context, ONEOK is an integrated midstream beast operating 60,000 miles of natural gas, NGL, and refined products and crude oil pipelines, processing plants, fractionation, storage, and marine export assets across multiple basins in the U.S.

Those basins would include the Permian, which could well overtake the Marcellus as the nation’s largest natural gas producer. And that’s where the Brazos’ deal gets interesting.  

Zoom In: ONEOK’s Permian assets include 700 miles of gathering pipe across seven counties in the Midland and 1.8 BCFD of processing capacity.

Zero In: The Brazos acquisition will double ONEOK’s processing capacity to 2.3 BCFD, including new plants under construction in the Midland that tie directly into ONEOK’s NGL transportation and downstream fractionation system.

Couldn’t be more excited to see what’s to come for ONEOK.