Ethylene export terminal being built

Enterprise Products Partners of Houston and its London partner have begun construction of an ethylene export terminal at Enterprise’s Morgan’s Point facility on the Houston Ship Channel.

The terminal is a joint venture of Enterprise, a leading exporter of fuels, and Navigator Holdings, a shipping company specializing in transporting liquefied gases. When the terminal is completed, it will have the capacity to export 2.2 billion pounds a year of ethylene, a building block of many plastics. It’s expected to begin operating late next year to supply markets in Asia and elsewhere.

The project comes amid a surge in ethylene production along the Gulf Coast. The shale drilling boom in West Texas has unleashed a cheap and steady supply of natural gas liquids such as ethane, a feedstock for petrochemicals and plastics.

U.S. ethane production is projected to increase nearly 60 percent to 2 million barrels a day by 2021, up from 1.26 million barrels a day in 2016, according to the research firm IHS Markit.

A series of new crackers, which process ethane into ethylene, is coming online in the near future. The International Energy Agency forecasts that U.S. ethylene production will increase by 13 million tons a year through 2023, feeding demand for consumer products by growing middle classes in China, India and other emerging economies.

A joint venture of energy and chemical producers Total, Borealis and NOVA Chemicals will soon break ground on a $1.7 billion ethane cracker alongside Total’s Port Arthur refinery.

The world’s largest ethane cracker is slated to be built near Corpus Christi. SABIC, Saudi Arabia’s oil producer, has partnered with Exxon Mobil Chemical Co. to build it as part of a massive $10 billion petrochemical complex there.