Over 27 years, Dallas-based Energy Transfer has grown from a modest operator with 200 miles of natural gas pipelines in East Texas, to a diversified midstream machine with 125,000 miles of pipelines and energy infrastructure across 41 states. You’d need a 3D satellite image to fully appreciate its vast expanse as the nation’s second-largest energy infrastructure company. And then there’s ET’s strategic move into China.

Reese Energy Consulting today is following the latest news from Energy Transfer and its acquisition of Houston-based Crestwood Equity Partners. The $7.1 billion all-equity deal, coming in a hair’s-breadth short of ET’s $7.2 billion purchase of Okla. City-based Enable Midstream Partners in 2021, checks all the boxes to further expand the company’s midstream operations in the Williston and Permian Delaware, along with a welcome mat to the Powder River Basin. Crestwood’s assets include a combined 2 BCFD of gathering pipe, 12.7 million dedicated acres, 1.4 BCFD of processing capacity, and 13 NGLs terminals with 10 MMBbls of storage capacity.

That last part caught our attention as not only will Crestwood’s NGLs assets boost ET’s downstream fractionation business at Mont Belvieu, they’ll also supply more ethane to the company’s Nederland and Marcus Hook export terminals. As the nation’s largest NGLs exporter, Energy Transfer is the first of its ilk to open an office in Beijing to meet China’s demand for ethane and LNG. With supply agreements signed for both, ET’s next chapter is well underway that could well turn the machine into a transformer.