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Foreign companies are making big bets on the Gulf Coast petrochemical corridor, where capital investment is surging because of cheap U.S. natural gas, other lower costs and the existing industry infrastructure. Domestic natural gas and its byproducts including ethane — a building block petrochemical companies use to make plastics and other materials — are low-priced relative to most of the world because of the surge in oil and gas production from U.S. shale plays. The bargain-rate raw material has caused a stampede of recent international investment along the Gulf Coast in Louisiana and Texas, the center of the U.S. petrochemical...

Daily spot prices for natural gas liquids (NGL)—ethane, propane, normal butane, isobutane, and natural gasoline—have moderated because of a combination of ample supply, flat or moderating demand, export constraints, and domestic infrastructure constraints. Ethane spot prices have been below the 2007-to-2012 range for every trading day in 2013 so far. For the first six months of 2013, ethane prices averaged 27 cents per gallon, over 45% below the price for the first six months of 2012. Ethane prices have been low compared with natural gas prices, prompting gas processors to leave it mixed in the natural gas stream, a phenomenon...

The "ethane advantage" held by the US petrochemical industry is very real, but it may not last that long. Out of hundreds of votes cast by readers in a recent HydrocarbonProcessing.com industry poll, about 80% of professionals predict North American ethane feedstocks will remain cost-advantaged to the US for 10 years or fewer. Relative to the rest of the world, 49% said the US would hold its cost benefit for up to 10 years, while 31% predicted the US to maintain its advantage for only up to 5 years. Just 20% forecast the cost savings to last for a longer...

Ethane in Mont Belvieu posted at 22.5 cnts/gal on Friday, continuing the NGL’s descent into the abyss that started mid-2012. The last time we saw ethane at this level was back in 2002. With natural gas prices hanging in there above $3.00/MMbtu, there is no doubt about it. We are deep into ethane rejection economics. Not just for the Conway market like we had last summer. But wide spread, across the board, knock-out-the-ethane style rejection, unlike anything we’ve seen in the last five years. In fact, this is something new. Impending widespread rejection in the world of shale…a world of...

Here’s something to think about the next time you toss a plastic milk carton in the recycling bin: You’re part of the natural gas revolution, and a $15 billion expansion at chemical plants along the Texas Gulf Coast will bring it closer to home than ever. “We started watching a few years ago,” said Mark Lashier, executive vice president of olefins and polyolefins at Chevron Phillips Chemical. “We went from, ‘Gosh, is this something real?’ to convincing ourselves this is here to stay.” “This” is not only low natural gas prices but also the huge reserves of shale gas released...

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Shell Oil Co. has chosen a site near Pittsburgh for a major, multi-billion-dollar petrochemical refinery that could create thousands of construction jobs and provide a huge economic boost to the region. Dan Carlson, Shell's General Manager of New Business Development, said Thursday that the company signed a land option agreement with Horsehead Corp. to evaluate a site near Monaca, about 35 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. The so-called ethane cracking, or cracker, plant would convert ethane from bountiful Marcellus Shale natural gas liquids into more profitable chemicals such as ethylene, which are then used to produce everything from...

A proposed pipeline project that could transport up to 190,000 barrels of ethane from Appalachian shale fields to the Texas Gulf Coast has secured enough customers to move forward, Enterprise Products Partners announced today. The Houston company, which revealed two months ago that it had lined up its first long-term contract to use the pipeline, now says it has enough in place to make the project financially feasible. The 1,230-mile line is expected to be running in early 2014, taking advantage of the increased production of natural gas liquids and their lower price relative to oil-based liquids. “The willingness of...

Enterprise Products Partners has scored the first major customer in its milestone plan to feed Gulf Coast industry with ethane from the burgeoning Northeast shale region, the pipeline company announced Wednesday. Chesapeake Energy Corp., an Oklahoma City-based oil and natural gas drilling company, has signed a long-term contract with Enterprise to transport 75,000 barrels per day over the pipeline, which is slated to begin operation in early 2014 with a capacity of 125,000 barrels per day. Enterprise announced in October its plan to build a 1,230-mile pipeline to the Gulf Coast petrochemical hub from the Marcellus and Utica shales in...

IF LIFE exists on Titan, Saturn's biggest moon, we could soon know about it - as long as it's the methane-spewing variety. The chemical signature of microbial life could be hidden in readings taken by the European Space Agency's Huygens probe when it landed on Titan in January. Titan's atmosphere is about 5 per cent methane, and Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffet Field, California, thinks that some of it could be coming from methanogens, or methane-producing microbes. Now he and Heather Smith of the International Space University in Strasbourg, France, have worked out the likely diet...

DARMSTADT, Germany - A European space probe landed safely on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan on Friday, a space official said, buoying hopes the mission would produce data that could shed light on the origins of life on Earth. Officials were jubilant as early signals showed the probe powering up for entry, then beginning the 2 1/2-hour parachute descent during which it was to gather information that could shed light on how life arose on Earth. Mission controllers were confident the Huygens probe made a soft landing because it was still transmitting steadily long after it should have landed,...