North American energy provider Enterprise Products Partners L.P. (EPD) and LNG carrier operator Navigator Holdings Ltd. (NVGS) announced that construction is now underway on their 50/50 joint venture ethylene export terminal which will be located at Enterprise’s Morgan’s Point, Texas facility on the Houston Ship Channel.
The terminal will have the capacity to export approximately 2.2 billion pounds of ethylene per year. Refrigerated storage for 66 million pounds of ethylene is being constructed on-site and will provide the capability to load ethylene at rates of 2.2 million pounds per hour.
Commercial operations are expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2019, one quarter earlier than projected when the parties signed on the development of the export terminal back in July 2017.
By providing access to international markets, the new export terminal is expected to facilitate continued growth of domestic ethylene production, which is expected to reach 90 billion pounds per year by 2021.
David Butters, chief executive officer of Navigator Gas, has earlier commented:
A strategically located ethylene export terminal is the key to unlocking growing petrochemical production capacity in the US.
