Tumbleweed Midstream, LLC (Tumbleweed) recently announced that it has acquired the Ladder Creek Helium Plant and Gathering System from DCP Midstream, LP. The plant is located just west of Cheyenne Wells, Colorado, near the Colorado-Kansas border.
The Ladder Creek Helium Plant and Gathering System serves natural gas producers operating in eastern Colorado and western Kansas, which includes the Morrow, Mississippian, Spergen, Chester, and Marmaton formations. The natural gas produced in the region has a high helium content, with average concentrations as high as 3%. The plant was built by Union Pacific Resources (Union Pacific) to separate helium from the natural gas stream and liquefy it for transport to the market.
Tumbleweed Midstream was established in 2019 to focus on the acquisition, operation, and growth of the Ladder Creek Helium Plant and Gathering System.
Current processing capacity at the Ladder Creek cryogenic processing plant is 40 million cubic feet of natural gas per day (MMcf/d), expandable to 50 MMcf/d. The plant has the capacity to extract and liquefy 1.5 MMcf/d of helium, with extraction and liquefaction to purity levels of 99.999%.