Ethane

The United States has been producing and exporting more ethane by pipeline and, beginning earlier this year, by tanker from the East and Gulf coasts. Jim Teague, CEO of Enterprise Products Partners LP’s general partner, is bullish on continued export growth as ethane is a key building block for the plastics that make the “lifestyle products” the rest of the world wants.

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.

An affiliate of Royal Dutch Shell plc started acquiring rights-of-way this month for a 94-mile ethane transport system that would feed the company’s proposed multi-billion dollar cracker in Western Pennsylvania.

An affiliate of Royal Dutch Shell plc started acquiring rights-of-way this month for a 94-mile ethane transport system that would feed the company’s proposed multi-billion dollar cracker in Western Pennsylvania.

Customers recently canceled some liquid petroleum gas (LPG) loadings at Enterprise Products Partners LP’s Gulf Coast terminal, but this month the company loaded a record number of polymer grade propylene (PGP) cargos. And the first ethane commissioning cargo is due to leave next month from the company’s Houston Ship Channel (HSC) terminal.

As shale development continues to unfold in Appalachia and with Royal Dutch Shell plc’s decision to build a multi-billion dollar ethane cracker in Western Pennsylvania, getting more natural gas liquids (NGL) storage and other infrastructure built is critical, according to several experts who spoke at an industry conference in Pittsburgh this week.

A unit of Royal Dutch Shell plc decided to proceed with a multi-billion dollar ethane cracker in Western Pennsylvania for three primary reasons: cost-advantaged feedstock, market proximity and strong local support, one of the project’s leading executives said Tuesday.

Ground has been broken for a $3 billion chemical manufacturing project in Lake Charles, LA.