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General
6 Months Ended
Jun. 30, 2020
Organization, Consolidation and Presentation of Financial Statements [Abstract]  
General
(1) General

In this report, the terms “Company” or “Registrant,” as well as the terms “ENLC,” “our,” “we,” “us,” or like terms, are sometimes used as abbreviated references to EnLink Midstream, LLC itself or EnLink Midstream, LLC together with its consolidated subsidiaries, including ENLK and its consolidated subsidiaries. References in this report to “EnLink Midstream Partners, LP,” the “Partnership,” “ENLK,” or like terms refer to EnLink Midstream Partners, LP itself or EnLink Midstream Partners, LP together with its consolidated subsidiaries.

Please read the notes to the consolidated financial statements in conjunction with the Definitions page set forth in this report prior to Part I—Financial Information.

a.Organization of Business

ENLC is a Delaware limited liability company formed in October 2013. The Company’s common units are traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “ENLC.” ENLC owns all of the common units of ENLK, a Delaware limited partnership formed in 2002. EnLink Midstream GP, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company and our wholly-owned subsidiary, is ENLK’s general partner. The General Partner manages ENLK’s operations and activities.

b.Nature of Business

We primarily focus on providing midstream energy services, including:

gathering, compressing, treating, processing, transporting, storing, and selling natural gas;
fractionating, transporting, storing, and selling NGLs; and
gathering, transporting, stabilizing, storing, trans-loading, and selling crude oil and condensate, in addition to brine disposal services.

Our natural gas business includes connecting the wells of producers in our market areas to our gathering systems. Our gathering systems consist of networks of pipelines that collect natural gas from points at or near producing wells and transport it to our processing plants or to larger pipelines for further transmission. We operate processing plants that remove NGLs from the natural gas stream that is transported to the processing plants by our own gathering systems or by third-party pipelines. In conjunction with our gathering and processing business, we may purchase natural gas and NGLs from producers and other supply sources and sell that natural gas or NGLs to utilities, industrial consumers, marketers, and pipelines. Our transmission pipelines receive natural gas from our gathering systems and from third-party gathering and transmission systems and deliver natural gas to industrial end-users, utilities, and other pipelines.

Our fractionators separate NGLs into separate purity products, including ethane, propane, iso-butane, normal butane, and natural gasoline. Our fractionators receive NGLs primarily through our transmission lines that transport NGLs from East Texas and from our South Louisiana processing plants. Our fractionators also have the capability to receive NGLs by truck or rail terminals. We also have agreements pursuant to which third parties transport NGLs from our West Texas and Central Oklahoma operations to our NGL transmission lines that then transport the NGLs to our fractionators. In addition, we have NGL storage capacity to provide storage for customers.

Our crude oil and condensate business includes the gathering and transmission of crude oil and condensate via pipelines, barges, rail, and trucks, in addition to condensate stabilization and brine disposal. We also purchase crude oil and condensate from producers and other supply sources and sell that crude oil and condensate through our terminal facilities to various markets.

Across our businesses, we primarily earn our fees through various fee-based contractual arrangements, which include stated fee-only contract arrangements or arrangements with fee-based components where we purchase and resell commodities in connection with providing the related service and earn a net margin as our fee. We earn our net margin under our purchase and resell contract arrangements primarily as a result of stated service-related fees that are deducted from the price of the commodities purchased. While our transactions vary in form, the essential element of most of our transactions is the use of our
assets to transport a product or provide a processed product to an end-user or marketer at the tailgate of the plant, pipeline, or barge, truck, or rail terminal.

c.Current Market Environment

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak a pandemic and recommended containment and mitigation measures worldwide. The pandemic has now reached every region of the globe and has resulted in widespread adverse impacts on the global economy, on the energy industry as a whole and on midstream companies, and on our customers, suppliers, and other parties with whom we have business relations. The pandemic and related travel and operational restrictions, as well as business closures and curtailed consumer activity, have resulted in a reduction in global demand for condensate, natural gas, and NGLs and especially crude oil. While reductions in global demand for natural gas and NGLs were never as severe as for crude oil and the demand for crude oil has recovered from the steepest drops in April and May, global demand for energy is still reduced as of the date of this report from levels before the pandemic in mid-February. The decline in demand, coupled with the failure of OPEC+ to quickly agree on oil production cuts, resulted in a decline in the market price for these commodities, most severely for crude oil. Although OPEC+ agreed to production cuts in April, extended these cuts through July, and are expected to continue the production cuts beyond July, although at a more moderate level, and although United States oil producers have also curtailed their drilling programs, these cuts have not been enough to fully offset demand loss attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic and market prices remain lower than prior to the pandemic.

As a result of the supply/demand imbalance, reduced commodity prices, and an uncertain timeline for recovery, oil and natural gas producers, including many of our customers, have curtailed their current drilling and production activity, including in some cases by shutting-in production, as well as reducing their plans for future drilling and production activity. As a result of these decreases in producer activity, we have experienced reduced volumes gathered, processed, fractionated, and transported on our assets in some of the regions that supply our systems.
There is considerable uncertainty regarding how long COVID-19 will persist and affect economic conditions and the extent and duration of changes in consumer behavior, such as the reluctance to travel, as well as governmental and other measures implemented to try to slow the spread of the virus, such as large-scale travel bans and restrictions, border closures, quarantines, shelter-in-place orders, and business and government shutdowns. As a result, there is significant uncertainty regarding how long the market dislocations will continue and how significantly and how long they will continue to affect us. We expect to see continued volatility in crude oil, condensate, natural gas, and NGL prices for the foreseeable future, which may, over the long term, adversely impact our business. A sustained significant decline in oil and natural gas exploration and production activities and related reduced demand for our services by our customers, whether due to decreases in consumer demand or reduction in the prices for oil, condensate natural gas and NGLs or otherwise, would have a material adverse effect on our business, liquidity, financial condition, results of operations, and cash flows (including our ability to make distributions to our unitholders).