Enterprise plans new facility to export ethane from Texas Gulf Coast

Enterprise Products plans to build a fully-refrigerated ethane export facility on the Texas Gulf Coast, the company announced on Tuesday.

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 bbl/hour, or up to 240,000 bpd. 

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,” said Michael A. Creel, CEO of Enterprise’s general partner. “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 US energy," Creel added. "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 300,000 bpd and could exceed demand by up to 700,000 bpd 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."

The ethane export facility will be integrated with Enterprise’s Mont Belvieu complex, which includes over 650,000 bpd of natural gas liquid (NGL) fractionation capacity and 100 million bbl of NGL storage capacity. The Mont Belvieu facility receives NGL supplies from the major producing basins across the US. 

The Mont Belvieu complex is also connected to growing supplies of ethane from the Marcellus and Utica shale regions through Enterprise’s recently-completed ATEX ethane pipeline.

Enterprise says its integrated NGL system will offer supply assurance and diversification for the export facility.