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Enterprise Products Partners is planning to build an ethane export facility along the Gulf Coast in Texas, capable of loading 240,000 barrels per day of liquefied gas onto tankers headed for international buyers. The new export complex could help relieve a massive glut in U.S. ethane supplies, which Enterprise estimates could shoot past demand by 700,000 barrels per day by 2020. Ethane, a ubiquitous byproduct of the surge in North American energy production, is used as a feedstock for chemical plants like Dow Chemical’s planned ethylene complex in Freeport, Texas. “By providing new markets access to ethane, we are assisting...

Construction for a new gas processing plant near Houston has gained federal approval. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency signed off on Dallas-based Lone Star NGL LLC's new natural gas processing plant in Mont Belvieu outside of Houston. Lone Star is a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners LP (NYSE: ETP) that was founded to provide natural gas liquids storage, refining, processing and pipeline transportation services. The new plant would join two other existing ones with the goal of separating natural gas liquids into products like ethane, propane, butanes and natural gas. The plant would process 100,000 barrels a day, according to...

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...

A simple tweak by the Commerce Department would allow the U.S. to begin selling ultralight fossil fuels overseas, a significant first step in easing the 39-year-old ban on crude exports, a new report says. The analysis released by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, focuses on condensate, a natural gas liquid made up of light fuels such as propane and butane. The fuels generally flow as liquids at normal temperatures even if they’re gas underground. Though it is chemically different than crude, condensate is swept under the oil export ban — at least as long as the light hydrocarbon is coming out...

The Phillips 66 refinery can seem a maze of tanks, pipes and valves for the uninitiated, even with descriptively named paths like “Diesel Drive” and “Coker Road” showing the way. Originally built by the U.S. government to process fuel for Allied aircraft during World War II, the plant now is the largest refinery by capacity in the portfolio of Phillips 66, Houston’s biggest Fortune 500 company. As Phillips 66 officials led a media tour tour this week, crews were preparing the site for the latest addition — a fractionator to separate natural gas liquids into components including ethane, propane and...

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Companies developing multibillion-dollar Gulf Coast plants to export cheap domestic natural gas or make things with it are encountering a harsh reality: There aren’t enough skilled hands to do all that building. “It causes a big concern about what’s going to actually happen when it comes to fulfilling these jobs,” says Michael Bergen, executive vice president of Industrial Info Resources, a Sugar Land-based market research firm. It projects that companies ?will invest more than $64 billion to build at least seven liquefied natural gas facilities along the Gulf Coast in the coming years. And if demand for labor drives up...

Low U.S. natural gas prices have helped increase domestic plastic production after a decline from the 2008 recession. Because many U.S. plastic manufacturers use natural gas as their primary fuel source and natural gas-sourced liquids as a feedstock, continued low prices for those resources could boost raw plastic exports, given higher foreign energy prices. The United States supplies raw plastics, sometimes called resins, to domestic makers of plastic products, such as food packaging and toys. Raw plastics are also exported. During the economic downturn in 2008 and 2009, U.S. production of plastic products declined further than raw plastic production, and...

In the Marcellus and Utica shale regions of Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, natural gas is being fracked and pumped from the ground at a prodigious rate. While most people are familiar with natural gas and the Marcellus Shale, there's a second, quieter revolution playing out in the gas fields. And energy companies are investing billions to get a piece of it. As it comes from the ground, natural gas isn't an homogenized, pure element. It's a mix of different compounds, more akin to a stream than anything else. Within that stream are trace elements of propane and ethane, commonly...

The US shale gas revolution is producing a lot of ethane in the Northeast that doesn’t have an obvious market. New pipeline projects are taking care of that issue, as Bridget Hunsucker discusses in this week’s Oilgram News column, At the Wellhead. New NGL pipeline capacity will soon come online in the US Northeast, much to the relief of natural gas producers who face a perplexing logistics dilemma with unwanted ethane. Sunoco Logistics’ Mariner West project and Enterprise’s Appalachia-to-Texas Express Pipeline (ATEX) pipeline, both of which will transport a glut of unwanted ethane from the area, are expected to ramp...

Kinder Morgan Energy Partners is tacking on 18 miles of lateral pipeline in the Eagle Ford Shale to carry crude and condensate from its DeWitt County, Texas station to a new facility it will build northwest in Gonzales County. The company’s $74 million pipeline addition would allow it to reach markets along the Houston Ship Channel and a pipeline that services a Phillips 66 refinery in Brazoria County. Kinder Morgan said Wednesday it struck a deal with a large producer in the Eagle Ford to extend the 178-mile pipeline in the South Texas shale play, but did not disclose the...

It’s doubtful that President Barack Obama will reach his ambitious goal of doubling U.S. exports between 2010 and 2015. U.S. exports totaled $1.6 trillion in 2009 and rose by just $600 billion over the next three years, hitting $2.2 trillion in 2012. But one industry has provided a robust boost for Obama’s export target: energy. While the total value of U.S. exports has grown less than 40 percent since Obama announced his goal, fuel exports have grown twice as fast. In January 2010, the United States exported 1.9 million barrels of crude and petroleum products per day. By May, that...

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...

Atlas Pipeline Partners LP, Pittsburgh, Pa., will build a 200-MMcfd cryogenic processing plant in West Texas to handle rapidly increasing Permian basin production. The Edward plant will have initial capacity of 100 MMcfd, and Atlas expects it to be in service in second-half 2014. The company noted that, as production increases behind its system, additional compression and refrigeration equipment will increase the plant’s capacity to 200 MMcfd and come into service “as needed.” Completion of the full plant will increase Atlas’ processing capacity on its WestTX system to 655 MMcfd from 455 MMcfd, expanding beyond the 200-MMcfd Driver plant addition...

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...

Two natural gas liquids pipelines covering more than 1,500 miles have begun service to the Gulf Coast. The pipelines, owned in partnership by DCP Midstream, Phillips 66 and Spectra Energy, carry natural gas liquids from the Permian Basin, the Eagle Ford Shale and the mid-continent to the coast. The Sand Hills Pipeline is a 720-mile pipeline from the Permian Basin and the Eagle Ford Shale. The 800-mile Southern Hills Pipeline stretches from the mid-continent to the hub at Mont Belvieu. Lisa Newkirk, a spokeswoman for DCP Midstream, declined to say where in the mid-continent the pipeline originates but said the...

...Already, a raft of global players have opened their wallets to invest in the early stages of the dozen or more planned Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) export facilities, which chills methane gas to -260 degrees to move it as a liquid in ships. International owners include China Investment Corporation, BG Group from the United Kingdom, Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, Mitsui from Japan, Osaka Gas from Japan, Qatar Petroleum, RRJ Capital from Hong Kong and Singapore , RWE from Germany, Temasek from Singapore, and Tokyo Gas . Midstream Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs) are the logical owners of LNG export facilities,...

TOKYO - Three Japanese energy companies jointly said Wednesday they have confirmed natural gas and condensate reserves in exploration blocks offshore in Vietnam. Idemitsu Kosan Co., JX Holdings Inc. and Inpex Corp. have drilled three wells in two blocks located 300 kilometers southeast of Ho Chi Minh, they said in a statement. The three companies will further explore the blocks to gauge the size of the reserves and conduct test drilling on other prospective structures in the blocks, the statement said.

The petrochemical business long operated below the radar, trying not to draw attention as it rode the boom and bust cycles of the industry. But that’s changing as shale gas has promised a steady supply of low-cost natural gas, which provides both fuel and feedstock for the chemical industry. Chemical companies have become both economic players — an expansion estimated at more than $15 billion is under way at chemical plants along the Texas Gulf coast — and supplicants on the labor market. “It’s super challenging right now,” said Greg Wagner, vice president of human resources at Chevron Phillips Chemical...

Since hitting a 13-year low of $1.82 per thousand British thermal units on April 20, 2012, the benchmark Henry Hub natural gas futures contract price has steadily regained momentum. In fact, it has hovered above the $4- mark for much of the period since mid-March of this year. Like the Henry Hub price, hiring in the Marcellus and other shale gas plays appears to be on the rebound after a lull earlier this decade, a Houston-based oil and gas recruitment specialist told Rigzone at the recent American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) Annual Convention and Exhibition 2013 in Pittsburgh. Senior...