Property, Plant and Equipment

9 Months Ended

Sep. 30, 2014

Property, Plant and Equipment [Abstract]

6. PROPERTY, PLANT AND EQUIPMENT

A summary of the historical cost of property, plant and equipment is as follows:



thousands	Estimated Useful Life	September 30, 2014		December 31, 2013
Land	n/a	$	2,584	$	2,584
Gathering systems	3 to 47 years	4,244,640		3,673,008
Pipelines and equipment	15 to 45 years	145,851		146,008
Assets under construction	n/a	345,799		405,633
Other	3 to 40 years	15,405		11,867
Total property, plant and equipment		4,754,279		4,239,100
Accumulated depreciation		986,692		855,845
Net property, plant and equipment		$	3,767,587	$	3,383,255

The cost of property classified as “Assets under construction” is excluded from capitalized costs being depreciated. These amounts represent property that is not yet suitable to be placed into productive service as of the respective balance sheet date.

At December 31, 2013, other long-term assets includes $4.6 million of unguaranteed residual value related to the capital lease component of a processing agreement assumed in connection with the acquisition of the Granger straddle plant as a part of the Mountain Gas Resources, LLC acquisition in January 2012. This agreement, in which WES was the lessor, was replaced effective April 1, 2014, with a gas conditioning agreement that does not satisfy criteria required for lease classification. As such, during the second quarter of 2014, the $4.6 million capital lease asset was reclassified from other long-term assets to property, plant and equipment and commenced depreciation.

During the three and nine months ended September 30, 2014, WES recognized impairments of $0.4 million and $0.7 million, respectively, related to the cancellation of various capital projects by the third-party operator of the Non-Operated Marcellus Interest. During the three months ended September 30, 2014, WES also recognized an impairment of $0.5 million related to a compressor no longer in service at the Hilight system. During the first quarter of 2014, WES recognized a $1.2 million impairment primarily related to a non-operational plant in the Powder River Basin that was impaired to its estimated fair value of $2.4 million, using Level 3 fair-value inputs.

- Definition

The entire disclosure for long-lived, physical assets used in the normal conduct of business and not intended for resale. Includes, but is not limited to, accounting policies and methodology, roll forwards, depreciation, depletion and amortization expense, including composite depreciation, accumulated depreciation, depletion and amortization expense, useful lives and method used, income statement disclosures, assets held for sale and public utility disclosures.

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