22 April 2014
Details
Enterprise Products Partners LP.
announced today that it plans to build
a fully refrigerated ethane export facility
on the Texas Gulf Coast.
Enterprise has executed long-term contracts
to support the development of the facility,
which is designed to have an aggregate loading rate of
approximately 10,000 barrels per hour,
or up to 240 thousand barrels per day (“MBPD”).
The export facility is expected to begin operations
in the third quarter of 2016.
said Michael A. Creel,
chief executive officer of Enterprise’s general partner.
“We are pleased to announce
the successful development of
our fully refrigerated ethane export facility,
which will be the largest in the world,”
“We continue to receive strong interest
from the international community for this project
and are having ongoing discussions
with other potential customers
that could result in our contracting
the remaining capacity of the facility.”
“This facility is another example of
Enterprise serving incremental market
demand for growing supplies of U.S. energy.
This is particularly important for ethane,
which is a byproduct of natural gas and
crude oil production and has limited uses.
We estimate U.S. ethane production capacity currently
exceeds U.S. demand by 300 MBPD and
could exceed demand by up to 700 MBPD by 2020,
after considering the estimated incremental demand from
new ethylene facilities that have been announced.
By providing new markets access to ethane,
we are assisting U.S. producers to increase their production,
which assures the U.S. will have access to abundant supplies of
domestically produced natural gas and crude oil,” stated Creel.
The ethane export facility will be integrated
with Enterprise’s Mont Belvieu complex,
which includes over 650 MBPD of
natural gas liquid (“NGL”) fractionation capacity and
100 million barrels of NGL storage capacity.
The partnership’s Mont Belvieu facility receives
NGL supplies from the major producing basins
across the U.S. The Mont Belvieu complex
is connected to growing supplies of ethane from
the Marcellus and Utica shale regions
through Enterprise’s recently
completed ATEX ethane pipeline.
Enterprise’s integrated NGL system
will offer supply assurance
and diversification for the export facility.
About Enterprise Products Partners LP
is one of the largest publicly traded partnerships
and a leading North American provider of
midstream energy services
to producers and consumers of
natural gas, NGLs, crude oil,
refined products and petrochemicals.
WWW.CHEMWINFO.COM BY KHUN PHICHAI
