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).