Jordan Blum, editorial director, Hart Energy: We are here at Hart Energy's DUG Appalachia Conference in Pittsburgh. I'm joined by Greg Floerke, the executive vice president and COO of MPLX.

I wanted to go back in time a little bit because it was MarkWest before MPLX and MarkWest was really an early midstream pioneer of the Marcellus Shale. I wanted to get your thoughts on just the evolution from then to now in terms of everything that's been built out and what's still happening now.

Greg Floerke, executive vice president and COO, MPLX: Great question. I love talking about the Marcellus. I'm really proud of my involvement there both before MarkWest and then since I joined MarkWest in 2013. We started with Range Resources. MarkWest was brought in and partnered with Range when they first started drilling the rich-gas part of the Marcellus Shale, primarily [in] Washington County, Pennsylvania. The extreme western area of Pennsylvania high Btu gas production with a lot of natural gas liquids. So with natural gas liquids comes the need to build processing plants as well as gathering and compression. Then ultimately, because we don't have fractionation like the Gulf Coast does, we had to actually build out the fractionation. So our first processing and fractionation facility was near Houston, Pennsylvania in Washington County. We built out an extensive trunk line and gathering line pad, gathering line system with compression. And that system is essentially built out today.

We do incrementally add capacity to that, but mostly it's adding compression horsepower and then we continue to add new plants. If you look at the very northern end of our rich gas system, we're in Butler County, Pennsylvania up north of Cranberry, we call that our Bluestone plant. You move down through our Houston, Pennsylvania plant, [its] our Harman Creek plant up near the Pittsburgh Airport is one of our newer pads or plants processing gas in Washington County. And then we move on down through West Virginia in Majorsville, Mobley [and] Wetzel County, West Virginia. And then our largest plant, the Sherwood plant, which is the largest in North America. That [Sherwood] processes almost 2.9 Bcf/d of gas, so it's very large. We grew from having no plants, a little over 15 years ago, to now in the northeast, including the Utica, about 8 Bcf/d of processing capacity. And along with that about 800,000 bbl/d of fractionation capacity, C3 plus and ethane, and that runs at a very high utilization rate, which is why we continue to expand.

JB: Very good. So obviously you're doing a lot, still building out gathering and processing. I wanted to get your take on what are the other biggest infrastructure needs for Appalachia where it's obviously challenging to build in terms of LNG, NGL exports and then greenfield pipelines?

GF: I think that our focus and our sweet spot is processing rich gas and producing NGLs. So we have to have some place to take the residue gas off the back of the processing plants, but we also have an extensive system of liquid lines to clear the ethane and the other purity products that we fractionate. So we were not exporting any propane, for example, in the United States just seven or eight years ago. Now we export nearly 2 MMbbl/d of propane alone, not counting butane and some of the natural gasoline. We're also exporting a lot of ethane. We produce a little over 300,000 bbl/d of ethane. We're the largest supplier to the Shell [Polymers] Monaca plant, the new plant north of Pittsburgh. But we also ship ethane via the Mariner pipelines to Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania for export to Canada and to the Gulf Coast.

So we truly are an integrated liquids system as long as we have enough to clear, which right now we do because we have a lot of optionality. But two thirds of it has to end up outside of the U.S. So we need to always have access through Mariner to Marcus Hook through that pipeline and then access to the Gulf Coast for some of our ethane. But really as a country, we need about 1.8 [MMbbl/d], 1.9 MMbbl/d of propane to clear every day out of the Houston Ship Channel. And as long as that happens, the storage doesn't fill up and the price stays good. So we're on kind of a precarious balance in terms of just enough and just in time in terms of any expansion. As long as everything runs with reliability, it's in pretty good balance. I think we can always use more outlet, if nothing else, for optionality and for times when pipes are in maintenance. Every facility, every pipeline has to go down at some point for some type of maintenance. And it's always nice to have a little bit in reserve. We don't have a lot. If we want to continue to grow the Marcellus, ultimately we're going to have to have access to more outlet capacity. I think both liquids and gas.

JB: Very good. Obviously it will be a challenge to build out there, but in terms of domestic demand, I also wanted to get your take on your bullishness for data center demand for Marcellus-Utica gas and the potential for maybe co-locating facilities.

GF: Data center demand I think is real. If you look at the advances in artificial intelligence and data mining, crypto, those are real. And that computing power has to grow and it has to be stationed somewhere. And I think the question remains, where does that growth occur and what is the power source? And it's not just the power required to power the computers or that hardware, it's the amount of density and the heat it generates and the cooling load is massive, and that's one of the biggest power draws. So is it going to be a nuclear option as you see some of the headlines in terms of even reviving shut-in plants and that kind of thing. We really think natural gas will have a place to play and I think the question is going to be, do you co-locate a data center next to the gas production infrastructure, put in a co-gen facility, which would help generate power for the midstream facility as well as the data center?

Or do you build transmission lines from gas fired plants, new plants, or do you build the data center next to the plants and hope that the grid can find electric supply somewhere else? I don't have the answer for that. I do know that it's probably easier to put another fiber optic cable in with an existing duct bank and move photons from a remote site than it is to get a permit to build a new electric transmission line or a pipe. That's my personal opinion is that there will be co-location opportunities, but I don't have the crystal ball.

JB: Lots of possibilities for sure. Well, thank you again so much for being here with us in Pittsburgh. We really appreciate it. To read and watch more, please visit online at hartenergy.com.

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