Enterprise Products Partners announced three additional expansion projects, aiming to increase the partnership’s capacity to load LPG, polymer grade propylene (PGP) and crude oil from its Enterprise Hydrocarbon Terminal (EHT) on the Houston Ship Channel.
Today, Enterprise’s LPG loading capacity is around 660,000 barrels per day, while the company has announced a project to add 175,000 BPD of LPG loading capacity, which is currently under construction, and is expected to be completed late third quarter of 2019.
[smlsubform prepend=”GET THE SAFETY4SEA IN YOUR INBOX!” showname=false emailtxt=”” emailholder=”Enter your email address” showsubmit=true submittxt=”Submit” jsthanks=false thankyou=”Thank you for subscribing to our mailing list”]
The additional projects aspire to enhance LPG loading capacity by further 260,000 BPD and are expected to be in service in the third quarter of 2020. Once completed, the projects will give EHT nameplate capacity to load up to about 1.1 million BPD of LPG, or 33 million barrels per month.
The partnership is also adding refrigeration facilities at its Houston Ship Channel terminal, in order to load up to 67,200 BPD, or approximately 2 million barrels per month, of fully refrigerated PGP. This expansion is expected to be available in the fourth quarter of 2020.
Under the expansion, Enterprise is also building an eighth dock at its Houston Ship Channel terminal with the ability to load around 840,000 BPD of crude oil, expanding the partnership’s nameplate export capacity for crude oil at the Houston Ship Channel to 2.75 million BPD. With plans to start operation in the fourth quarter of 2020, the new dock will be able to accommodate a Suezmax vessel, the largest ship class that can navigate the Houston Ship Channel.
Enterprise estimates that by 2025 exports of US crude oil will rise from 3 million BPD to 8 million BPD and the domestic LPG export market will double from 1.4 million BPD to 2.8 BPD. A large party of this growth is being led by increasing production from the Permian Basin of Texas.