American Oil and Gas Reporter - April 2019 - 45

America: Energy Epicenter
Ethane production grew 74 percent
between 2012 and 2018, reaching 1.7
MMbbl/d by last October. During the
same period, EIA says, ethane consumed
domestically increased from 900,000
bbl/d to 1.5 MMbbl/d because of growing
U.S. petrochemical demand associated
with plant expansions and new-build
petrochemical projects.
Two new pipelines to Canada and two
marine export terminals entered service
in early 2018, EIA reports. All told, these
projects expanded export capacity to
450,000 bbl/d, with U.S. ethane supplies
now reaching Brazil, Canada, India, Mexico, Norway, Sweden and the United
Kingdom. The agency notes that exports
from Energy Transfer Partners' Marcus
Hook marine terminal near Philadelphia
are likely to increase with the startup of
the Mariner East 2 pipeline.
EIA says additional ethane export facilities are under construction or being
planned. One example is Energy Transfer
Partners' announced export terminal at

Nederland, Tx. The Orbit terminal, planned
for completion in late 2020, will have
the capacity to export 175,000 bbl/d of
ethane, with 150,000 bbl/d of that capacity
already committed to Satellite Petrochemicals of China to supply its two new
petrochemical crackers.
More recently, EIA reports that American Ethane, a Russia-funded enterprise,
has broken ground on a 480,000 bbl/d export terminal on the Neches River in Beaumont, Tx. The joint venture with Texasbased Martin Midstream Partners aims to
supply ethane to a number of petrochemical
crackers in China that are awaiting government approval to begin construction.
The historic ramp-up in rich gas production should equate with a corresponding higher throughput volume for gas
processing. An EIA report finds that lower-48 processing capacity and throughput
increased 5 percent on a net basis between
2014 and 2017, even though the number
of plants actually declined slightly (Figure
3B). Overall processing plant utilization

rates stayed constant at 66 percent, but
several states experienced significant
changes, largely reflecting regional changes
in gas production.
EIA counted 510 active processing
plants in the lower-48 at year's end 2017,
with a total processing capacity of 80.8
Bcf/d. As a group, the plants processed
53.3 Bcf/d, EIA says, noting that plants
operate below capacity for many reasons,
including transportation constraints, varying production volumes and characteristics,
and regional economics.
Not surprisingly, regions with increased
natural gas production showed the largest
gains in processing capacity and throughput.
In West Virginia, increases in the utilization
of existing plants led to an increase in
throughput that exceeded its increase in
processing capacity, EIA says. In Montana
and North Dakota, utilization rates and
capacity also increased, alongside increased
gas production. Similarly, Ohio and West
Virginia also showed large increases in
both capacity and utilization.
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American Oil and Gas Reporter - April 2019

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