Western Midstream Partners has sanctioned a cryogenic processing plant in the North Loving area of its West Texas complex.

The midstream services provider has said the plant will have a capacity of 250 million cubic feet per day and will be operational in the fourth quarter of 2024.

News of the plant is the result of Occidental Petroleum’s recently amended natural gas processing agreement to provide up to 300 million cubic feet per day of additional processing capacity underpinned its decision for an additional plant.

Michael Ure, President and CEO of Western Midstream Partners, said the amendment provides greater certainty for Western Midstream Partners future profitability and underpins its decision to sanction an additional plant.

“We expect our West Texas complex to grow from today’s processing capacity of 1.54 billion cubic feet a day to 2.09 billion cubic feet a day by year-end 2024,” he added.

Over the past year, Western Midstream Partners’ commercial team has generated substantial value by executing multiple, long-term agreements that provide up to 950 million cubic feet per day of firm processing commitments.

Concurrent with the sanctioning of the North Loving Plant, and based on the most current production-forecast information from its product customers, Western Midstream Partners expects its total capital expenditures for 2023 to range between $700m and $800m.

Western Midstream Partners is a Delaware master limited partnership formed in September 2012. In December 2019, Western Midstream Partners executed several agreements with Occidental that enabled the company to operate as a standalone business. The company’s general partner is a wholly owned subsidiary of Occidental.

At the time of writing, Western Midstream Partners has 71 processing and treatment facilities across the US.