The midstream’s job today amounts to nothing less than “repiping North America,” according to a wide-ranging midstream panel discussion featured at the INGAA Foundation’s 2014 annual meeting.

Mike McGonagill, senior vice president and COO for Alliance Pipeline, served as panel moderator and made that observation as he opened the panel session. “Things have totally changed in this business” from a few years ago, he added, before multiple unconventional plays changed the future of North America’s energy business.

Joining McGonagill were Tony Chovanec, senior vice president, fundamentals and supply, Enterprise Products Partners LP; Greg Floerke, senior vice president, northeast region, MarkWest Energy Partners LP; and Chris Humes, vice president of operations, Crestwood Midstream Partners LP.

Chovanec observed that in addition to diverse growth demands, the midstream itself is a diverse business with multiple, interlocking functions. “The midstream is hard to describe—we don’t all look alike,” he told the conference, held in Dana Point, Calif.

Growth is the big midstream story now, he added, pointing out Enterprise alone has built or converted the use of some 6,000 miles of pipe in the last six years, focusing on NGL and crude oil systems. The firm’s current projects include an ethane-only system around the Gulf Coast that will supply the growing petrochemical capacity of that region. “That’s all about demand,” he said of the ethane system, noting growing ethane demand caused Enterprise to move from batch ethane movements to the new, dedicated system.

Floerke focused on a region that may see the greatest midstream change of any right now—the Northeast. MarkWest’s assets are at the center of the Marcellus-Utica production region and, as a result, it has become a keen observer of the region’s upstream and midstream trends.

“We do gather, we do compress, but the heart of our business is processing, that’s cryogenic to remove the gas from the liquids stream, then fractionation to break the liquids down into its pieces,” he explained, noting MarkWest assets were in place before the shale boom.

Following on Chovanec’s comments about ethane demand, Floerke noted that some 55% of NGL supply in the region is ethane, which must find a market “and the economics for ethane recovery are not very good right now,” he said. “The ability to blend an ethane-rich gas stream is becoming tougher and tougher” for residue gas pipelines. Such ethane-focused pipelines as ATEX and Mariner West are midstream’s response to that supply-demand imbalance.

But ethane is not a strictly midstream issue, Floerke said, adding “the issue goes back to the well pad and will become the controlling factor” in future growth of the Marcellus and Utica plays, he predicted.

Humes discussed the diverse regional operations of Crestwood, which has assets from coast to coast.

“We’re trying to grow organically or with bolt-on acquisitions” in the current robust midstream business, Humes added. Even though geographically diverse, Crestwood sees the Northeast “as one of our biggest growth areas” as the Marcellus and Utica develop and require new transportation capacity—a region he called “the most prolific natural gas play in history.”

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