Energy Transfer appears to have purchased the Delta Express pipeline from Nile Midstream, according to a recent tariff filing by the company. The recently built 8-inch line (green line in figure below) runs from northeast Crane County, Texas, to Energy Transfer’s majority-owned ET-S gathering system (orange lines) at the Pegasus terminal in Midland County. From Pegasus, crude can reach Midland terminals and several Energy Transfer egress options, including West Texas Gulf and Permian Express. Nile Midstream also owns the Waddle West and Waddle East gathering systems in western Crane County plus the smaller Monahans system in Winkler County (dark blue lines). It is not clear whether those gathering assets were also part of the transaction.
Nile Midstream is a subsidiary of Blackbeard Operating, an exploration and production company focused on crude oil in the Central Basin Platform. That geologic area sits between the Delaware and Midland basins in the Permian (see figure below). Unlike those two growth engines, the platform has seen relatively little of the Permian’s decade-long production surge, with Blackbeard as the main exception after several years of focused horizontal development.
Crane County crude oil production shows Blackbeard as the major source of Central Basin Platform growth. Countywide output rose from about 20,000 barrels per day in 2021 to more than 50,000 barrels per day in 2026 (see graph below), and Blackbeard accounts for roughly 75 percent of total county volumes.
The Delta Express pipeline purchase expands Energy Transfer’s gathering presence on the Central Basin Platform and is likely intended to pull more barrels toward Midland rather than local Crane-area connections (Cactus I/II/III and Gray Oak) that typically feed Corpus Christi (see figure below). If a portion of Blackbeard’s volumes are redirected onto Permian Express or West Texas Gulf, barrels would shift away from Corpus Christi and toward Nederland and Houston.
Flow/Transaction Updates and New Assets Under Coverage
Plainview has over 400 assets with crude oil throughput or transactional data on our platform and continues to add more each week. Data for existing assets under coverage are posted as soon as they become available. Below are the assets that were updated this week or newly added to coverage.
