Houston-based NorTex Midstream Partners LLC, in cooperation with Atlanta’s Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), has launched a natural gas trading point in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. That electricity market is one of the largest and fastest growing in the country, with more than 60% of installed capacity now being fueled by natural gas.
“Our Tolar Hub is the first ICE trading point for natural gas in North Texas and offers transparent fixed pricing, index pricing, and basis trading,” said John Holcolb, NorTex’s marketing vice president. “We believe this greatly improves our value to market participants by increasing liquidity, counterparty visibility, and overall trading activity.”
As an active and liquid physical gas trading point, the Tolar Hub directly connects NorTex’s Worsham-Steed gas storage facility to five Texas intrastate pipelines with more than 2 bcfd of pipeline take-away capacity and 1 bcfd of metering capacity. Worsham-Steed has 23 bcf of storage capacity and 450,000 Mcfd of maximum withdrawal capability.
“We’re very pleased with the initial results from the NorTex Tolar Hub/ICE trading activities,” said Rob Foss, president and CEO of NorTex. “We expect trading activity at the hub to grow as natural gas supplants coal as the fuel of choice for power generation. We also believe that highly liquid physical trading points, such as the NorTex Tolar Hub ICE point, will be critical to the efficient deployment of renewable resources, especially wind-driven generation.”
NorTex Midstream Partners is one of the largest independently owned developers and operators of high-deliverability, multi-cycle (HDMC) natural gas storage capacity in Texas. NorTex owns and operates more than 32 bcf of gas storage capacity with more than 700,000 Mcfd of aggregate maximum deliverability from Hill-Lake and Worsham-Steed. NorTex also provides natural gas transportation, crude oil production, gas processing, and NGL extraction services, while actively pursuing growth opportunities that fit its portfolio of high-quality midstream assets.
