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Crestwood stores, moves, and processes natural gas, natural gas liquids, and crude oil for energy producers and users across the United States.
Crestwood is a midstream energy company, which means it sits in the middle of the oil and gas business — between the companies that drill wells and the customers who eventually burn or use the fuel. It owns pipelines, storage tanks, processing plants, and gathering systems that collect raw natural gas and crude oil from wells and move them toward markets. Producers pay Crestwood to take this stuff off their hands and handle the messy logistics. That fee-based toll-road model is the heart of the business.
The company operates in three main areas. In the gathering and processing segment, Crestwood collects natural gas from producers' wells and separates out the valuable natural gas liquids — ethane, propane, butane and others — which are used in plastics, heating, and fuel blending. Its storage and logistics segment runs bulk terminals and rail facilities that handle crude oil, natural gas liquids, and chemicals. And its marketing segment buys and sells natural gas and liquids, smoothing out supply and demand for customers. Most of the money comes from fees charged for handling volumes, not from betting on commodity prices, though some exposure remains. Crestwood's customers are largely oil and gas producers working in basins like the Bakken in North Dakota, the Permian in Texas, and the Marcellus in Appalachia. It competes with bigger midstream players such as Energy Transfer and Williams Companies, and its fortunes rise and fall with drilling activity in the regions it serves. When producers slow down, volumes through Crestwood's pipes shrink and revenue follows.
In 2023, Energy Transfer agreed to acquire Crestwood in a deal valued at roughly $7.1 billion including debt, folding the smaller company into a much larger midstream network. The deal closed in January 2024, and Crestwood's units stopped trading on the NYSE. Before the sale, Crestwood had struggled with heavy debt and uneven cash flow, a reminder that midstream toll roads are only as good as the traffic flowing through them.
Saved answer · last researched 6 Nov 2026