The Houston area shipping docks are about to get another export terminal thanks to an agreement announced between Energy Transfer Partners, L.P. and Satellite Petrochemical USA Corp.
The two have entered into definitive agreements to form a joint venture called Orbit Gulf Coast NGL Exports LLC. The purpose is to construction a new export terminal on the Gulf Coast to provide ethane to Satellite so it can be shipped overseas to the company’s ethane cracking facilities in China.
Here is how the operations will work. Orbit will construct a 20-inch ethane pipeline originating at Energy Transfer’s Mont Belvieu, Texas Fractionators that will make deliveries to Orbit’s ethane export terminal. Orbit will also build an 800,000 barrel refrigerated ethane storage tank and a 175,000 barrel a day ethane refrigeration facility.
Energy Transfer will operate the Orbit assets and also construct the infrastructure to supply ethane to the pipeline and load it onto Very Large Ethane Carriers or VLECs. Once the ethane is loaded,it will be shipped to Satellite’s newly constructed ethane crackers in China’s Jiangsu Province.
The export terminal still needs Chinese governmental approval but it is expected the Orbit export terminal will be ready for commercial operation by the 4th quarter of 2020.
Energy Transfer Partners, based in Dallas was the first company in North America to export ethane by using its Mariner West system which exports ethane to Canada.
