MarkWest Energy Partners has unveiled plans for the expansion of its capacity to process natural gas and liquids produced in the Utica and Marcellus shale plays in the US.

The company will add more than 600 million cubic feet of gas processing capacity and 140,000 barrels of fractionation capacity per day.

On completion of the expansion project, MarkWest will operate about 2.3 billion cubic feet of processing capacity and about 300,000 barrels of fractionation capacity every day, serving the US Northeast shales, including Huron, Marcellus and Utica.

The expansion plan includes a 400 million cubic feet expansion of MarkWest’s Majorsville gas processing complex in West Virginia, increasing the facility’s total cryogenic processing capacity to 670 million cubic feet daily.

The expansion of the Majorsville facility will serve producer customers in the hydrocarbon-rich area of the Marcellus shale with the addition of two processing trains.

These processing trains, each with a capacity of 200 million cubic feet per day, are expected to commence operations in 2013.

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The expansion is supported by long-term deals with Consol Energy, Noble Energy and Range Resources.

MarkWest is also expanding its Marcellus natural gas liquid infrastructure with new de-ethanisation capacity at its Houston and Majorsville complexes, and installation of a large purity ethane pipeline between the two processing complexes.

Once completed, the expansion project will increase MarkWest’s processing capacity to more than 1.5 billion cubic feet daily in the rich-gas corridor of the Marcellus.

MarkWest chairman, president and CEO Frank Semple said: "We are very excited to announce significant midstream projects that are critical to the full development of the liquids-rich areas of the Marcellus shale in southwest Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia and the Utica shale in eastern Ohio."