Saddle Butte Pipeline, LLC constructed and now operates a parallel gas and crude oil Gathering System on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation for the Bakken and Three Forks development programs in North Dakota.
The gathering system utilizes a main trunkline system with central field compression at various central delivery points (CDPs) which allows for quick and efficient connection of incremental wellhead supply over a large geographic area. This system provides flexible and responsive infrastructure development at the lowest possible gathering rates resulting in the highest netback at the wellhead.

Saddle Butte’s system gathers both gas and oil at the well location utilizing separate but parallel high pressure pipelines which provide efficiencies not available to traditional low pressure gathering systems. We believe the efficiencies of this system will provide the highest level of reliability with lowest overall transportation costs.

In our system, crude oil is received at the well into the crude trunkline at pressures of up to approximately 500 psig. The natural gas and gas liquids are gathered from the wellhead in low pressure lines operating at less than 50 psig. Volumes gathered in these low pressure flowlines will be compressed into the high pressure trunkline system, operating at 900 to 1000 psig, at the distributed central compression and delivery points (CDPs). Gas volumes are delivered to Saddle Butte’s Little Missouri Gas Processing Plant where the natural gas and NGLs are further processed for further delivery to market.   The Saddle Butte Processing Plant provides products available for transport at a single, accessible location, and mitigates trucking on the remote reservation roads. The crude oil is delivered to one of two Saddle Butte crude terminals (Johnson’s Corner or Alexander) located outside of the Ft Berthold Reservation for further transport by truck or pipeline takeaway.

Saddle Butte believes this state of the art system provides efficient and cost effective gathering services for the undeveloped areas on the Reservation. This infrastructure significantly reduces flaring and venting and the associated potential for production curtailments.

Saddle Butte Fort Berthold Gathering, LLC
Production of oil and gas on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation is currently hampered by the lack of gathering infrastructure. Subsequently, producers and mineral interest owners are not receiving full value for the produced hydrocarbons due to flaring of gas and gas liquids.  With the development of a broad based gathering system, new alternatives would be provided to producers and subsequently a significant number of royalty owners will see increased royalty payments resulting from the sale of the natural gas and NGLs which were previously flared.  Saddle Butte’s gathering system provides a cost effective solution to remedy the current situation faced by producers and royalty owners by providing a gathering system to take crude, natural gas and NGLs to market for all producers. Saddle Butte’s management team has extensive experience working on Tribal lands and developing energy transportation solutions from wellhead to end market.

Off Reservation Gathering
Saddle Butte is also developing a full service off-reservation gathering systems to gather both natural gas and crude oil in the general area west of the Ft Berthold Reservation and the production areas south of Watford City called the Grasslands Gathering System, and areas to the north and south of the Missouri River east of Williston, North Dakota. These off-reservation systems will consist of approximately 80 miles of lateral pipelines and 100 miles of trunklines when fully developed. The off-reservation systems is designed to operate in the same manner as the on-reservation system described above.