News Articles & Press Releases
LDH Energy Announces Agreement with Colonial Pipeline and Expansion of Mont Belvieu Refined Products Storage
Houston, Texas – Louis Dreyfus Highbridge Energy LLC (LDH Energy) announced today that its subsidiary, LDH Energy Mont Belvieu L.P., has signed an agreement with Colonial Pipeline and commenced a major expansion and reconfiguration of storage capacity at its Mont Belvieu storage facility near Houston, Texas. The project will result in a total of 12 million barrels of refined products storage with full bi-directional connectivity to the Colonial Pipeline mainline system as well as other pipelines.
“Under the terms of the agreement, the LDH Energy connection at Mont Belvieu will have full Colonial Pipeline delivery and receipt capability for Colonial-specification refined products. The agreement establishes LDH Energy’s facility as a Colonial Pasadena origin location and will allow customers to manage their Colonial inventories via physical movements on Colonial’s mainline and via in-well transactions with other customers at LDH Energy’s facility, as is currently done withpropane,”said Mike Dowling, senior vice president with LDH Energy. The project requires the expansion and reconfiguration of the storage facility to accommodate additional refined product capacity. There are currently two wells with a total capacity of 4 million barrels that are dedicated to refined products storage. The expansion project is targeted to initially add an additional 8 million barrels of underground cavern storage for refined products service. Further expansion will be based on market demand.
Norm Szydlowski, CEO of Colonial Pipeline says, “We are excited to add the Houston area origin capacity expansion this facility provides. This will improve service for Colonial’s shippers who now will have access to additional fungible storage at our origin. Further, the addition of this origin on Colonial’s system will likely benefit all Colonial shippers because of Colonial’s enhanced flexibility for scheduling shipments from the Houston area.”
Storage of hydrocarbons in underground salt caverns, versus storage in above-ground tanks, is environ-mentally beneficial as product vapor emissions from salt caverns are virtually non-existent. LDH Energy’s Mont Belvieu storage facility currently includes 24 salt cavern storage wells with a total capacity of 44 million barrels, and stores refined products, propane, ethane, ethylene as well as other natural gas liquids (NGLs). Following engineering and construction, the storage facility will be reconfigured to allow increased refined products storage. The project will require construction of an injection facility west of Mont Belvieu in Harris County with pipelines connecting back to the existing LDH Energy caverns. In addition, the new facility will include new pumps large enough to meet the Colonial volume require-ments, meters and interconnecting pipelines. The projected schedule calls for start up of the facility by the end of 2008.
About LDH Energy
LDH Energy, through its various subsidiaries, operates one of the largest natural gas liquids, natural gas, power, emissions, coal, petroleum and petrochemical merchandising companies in North America and is involved in the processing, trading and transporting of a range of energy products. Currently marketing over 5.0 bcf of physical natural gas each day, its asset base includes, in addition to the Mont Belvieu storage facility, ownership of a 1,400-mile NGL pipeline from the Permian basin to a Hull storage facility and Mont Belvieu; a 4.5-million barrel propane/butane storage and terminal facility in Hattiesburg, Mississippi; an approximate 20-percent interest in the Sea Robin Gas Processing Plant; and a gas gathering and processing system in Eastland, Erath, Bosque and Hill Counties in north Texas. LDH Energy also owns two cryogenic liquids extraction plants, an olefins fractionation plant and an 85-mile pipeline located in southeast Louisiana.
LDH Energy is a joint venture between the Louis Dreyfus Group and an investment fund managed by Highbridge Capital Management, LLC. The Louis Dreyfus Group, which was founded in 1851, is an organization of diversified companies whose principal activities include worldwide processing, trading and merchandising of a broad range of agricultural and energy commodities, telecommunications, real estate development and shipping. For more information, please visit www.louisdreyfus.com. Highbridge Capital Management, LLC is a New-York based global alternative asset management company that is majority owned by JPMorgan Chase & Co.
About Colonial Pipeline
Colonial is the world’s largest products pipeline based on volumes shipped. The system consists of 5,500 miles of underground pipe extending from Houston to the New York harbor. Headquartered in Atlanta, Colonial delivers approximately 100 million gallons a day of liquid petroleum products such as gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, home heating oil and fuels for the U.S. military. Learn more about Colonial at www.colpipe.com.