Ares Management LP (NYSE: ARES) and ARM Energy Holdings LLC formed a joint venture on April 16 to develop Salt Creek Midstream LLC, a pure-play Delaware Basin midstream company.
Salt Creek also announced the successful close of its $350 million term loan facility, proceeds of which will be used to fund further development and expansion of the midstream project within the Permian in the Delaware Basin.
Once fully operational, Salt Creek will primarily be comprised of multiple cryogenic processing facilities, as well as gas and crude gathering pipelines, compression and treating facilities. The initial phase of Salt Creek’s project is expected to be commissioned in April and key phases of the company’s development plan will continue to enter service throughout 2018.
By the end of 2018, Salt Creek is expected to have 260 million cubic feet per day of processing capacity, with additional expansion investments planned as producers are added to the system.
To date, Salt Creek has secured commitments for more than 250,000 dedicated acres from multiple Delaware Basin producers, which the company expects will provide decades of high-return drilling inventory, driving additional project growth and scale in a rapidly expanding basin.
Salt Creek is owned by funds managed by the Ares Private Equity Group and ARM Energy. ARM Midstream Management LLC, a subsidiary of ARM Energy, will serve as operator of the project.
Ares Management is a publicly traded, leading global alternative asset manager with roughly $106.4 billion of assets under management as of year-end 2017 and 18 offices in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia. Headquartered in Houston, with offices in Calgary, Denver, Midland, and Pittsburgh, ARM Energy is a producer services firm, active in every sector of the energy value chain across all major North American oil and gas basins.
ARM Energy’s CEO Zach Lee said in a statement: “We are thrilled to partner with Ares on this important initiative, and are confident it will create long-term value for ARM Energy, Ares and our other partners. ARM’s downstream intelligence and in-depth fundamentals analysis provided us with the insight to identify Salt Creek as a unique midstream offering for Delaware Basin producers as we continue to build world-class midstream assets spanning the entire basin, as well as downstream market solutions for residue gas, NGL and crude. We believe the rapid development of the Salt Creek project, on the heels of our successful development and sale of Kingfisher Midstream, demonstrates our agility, efficiency and integrated approach in evaluating and capitalizing on market opportunities.”
Deutsche Bank was sole arranger and underwriter of the Salt Creek’s credit facility and Kirkland & Ellis LLP represented the company in the partnership between Ares Management and ARM Energy.
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