Enterprise Products Partners LP said the first cargo of ethane from its Morgan’s Point, TX, terminal has departed. The M/V JS INEOS Intrepid, loaded with about 265,000 bbl of ethane, set sail from the facility Thursday morning en route to the INEOS facility at Rafnes in Norway. The Morgan’s Point facility, which is the largest of its kind in the world, has a design loading capacity of 10,000 bbl/hour. “The driving force behind development of the terminal is the growing international demand for abundant U.S. ethane from shale plays, which offers the global petrochemical industry a low-cost feedstock option and supply diversification,” Enterprise said (see Daily GPI, July 28). Supply for the terminal is sourced from Enterprise’s natural gas liquids fractionation and storage complex in Mont Belvieu, TX, and transported through a new 18-mile, 24-inch diameter pipeline that was completed in February. The Mont Belvieu complex is connected to ethane production from the Marcellus and Utica shales through the ATEX pipeline (see Shale Daily, Dec. 5, 2013).

Royal Dutch Shell plc has purchased more land for the multi-billion dollar ethane cracker it plans to construct in Western Pennsylvania. The company closed on a 110-acre site in Center Township and a smaller parcel in nearby Potter Township for $5.5 million. The land would be utilized as a “green belt” for the plant, according to the company, and add a buffer near a shopping mall and other roads and buildings. The cracker is planned for a 400-acre site in Beaver County, about 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh (see Shale Daily, June 7). It would have the capacity to process a little more than 100,000 b/d of ethane. Production of ethylene and polyethylene at the facility is expected to begin sometime in the early 2020s.

Pivotal LNG has signed a multi-year contract to supply liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Carib Energy (USA), a unit of Crowley Maritime Corp. LNG would be transported by Crowley and delivered to Molinos de Puerto Rico, the Caribbean arm of Ardent Mills LLC, which plans to use the gas as a fuel source in its Puerto Rico operations. Pivotal plans to load LNG onto Crowley’s containers, which would be transported via truck to Crowley-owned vessels in Jacksonville, FL, and Crowley’s Puerto Rico-based logistics team then would deliver the LNG to Molinos in Puerto Rico (see Daily GPI, May 9; Aug. 19, 2014). Pivotal and Southern Company Gas (formerly AGL Resources Inc.) operate a network of LNG production facilities with the capacity to produce 540,000 gallons/day and the ability to store more than 94 million gallons. Pivotal, through its JAX LNG partnership, also is developing an LNG production facility in Jacksonville, with facility construction expected to begin soon (see Daily GPI, Jan. 6, 2015).

The Energy Information Administration said it now is using “near real-time” export data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection to improve weekly petroleum consumption estimates. The EIA has collected weekly data on inventories, imports, refinery and blender net production, but it did not collect weekly export data. It had previously relied on weekly export estimates based on monthly export data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The new data is to be included in the Weekly Petroleum Status Report. The real-time data allows the agency to provide more accurate market balances and a clearer picture of the weekly consumption of key petroleum products in the United States, EIA Administrator Adam Sieminski said. U.S. exports of crude oil, petroleum products and biofuels increased from 1 million b/d in 2004 to nearly 5 million b/d last year. Those exports have become a “more critical” component of assessing and calculating U.S. consumption of key petroleum products like gasoline.

Eagle LNG Partners has filed the last draft resource report in its prefiling process at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and anticipates submitting its formal application for its project in Jacksonville, FL by the end of the year. It would be a 1 million ton per annum liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant serving domestic LNG applications and nearby small-scale export markets beginning in 2019 (see Daily GPI, Jan. 28). Eagle LNG expects the project’s output to displace heavy fuel oil and diesel. Eagle LNG is a unit of Ferus Natural Gas Fuels LP.

A heavy equipment operator working on the four-state, nearly 1,200-mile Dakota Accessoil pipelinein North Dakota died at a hospital in Minot, ND, Friday following head injuries sustained on the job. The man, whose identity has not been released, was working as a subcontractor for the $3.7 billion Energy Transfer Partners‘ pipeline project being built by Dakota Access Pipeline LLC. The incident occurred nearly 200 miles north and west of ongoing protests against the project by the Standing Rock Sioux Native American Tribe and some environmental groups near the South Dakota border. The man apparently was working alone and was found by co-workers.

Chevron U.S.A. Inc. has signed a binding liquefied natural gas (LNG) sales and purchase agreement (SPA) with ENN LNG Trading Co. Ltd. for the delivery of LNG to China from Chevron’s global supply portfolio. Under the terms of the SPA, ENN will receive up to 0.65 million metric tons per annum (mtpa) of LNG over 10 years, with the first delivery expected to start in 2018 or the first half of 2019. ENN LNG Trading is a unit of ENN Energy Holding Ltd., which is one of the largest natural gas distribution companies in China. ENN Energy Holdings Ltd. operates in 150 cities across 17 provinces and autonomous regions, with more than 12 million residential and 56 thousand industrial/commercial customers. ENN LNG Trading’s Zhoushan LNG receiving terminal is under construction and expected to be in operation by 2018. The SPA delivery requirements are expected to be fulfilled, in at least in part, by Chevron’s Australian LNG interests at Gorgon, Wheatstone and the North West Shelf.