HOUSTON, US: Enterprise Products Partners LP plans to build a fully refrigerated ethane export facility on the Texas Gulf Coast, US. 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. The export facility is expected to begin operations in the third quarter of 2016.
“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,” said Michael A Creel, Chief Executive Officer, Enterprise’s general partner.
“This facility is another example of Enterprise serving incremental market demand for growing supplies of US energy. This is particularly important for ethane, which is a byproduct of natural gas and crude oil production and has limited uses. We estimate US ethane production capacity currently exceeds US demand by 300 thousand barrel per day and could exceed demand by up to 700 thousand barrel per day 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 US producers to increase their production, which assures the US will have access to abundant supplies of domestically produced natural gas and crude oil,” added Creel.
© Worldofchemicals News