Enterprise Products Partners L.P. is one of the largest publicly traded partnerships and a leading North American provider of midstream energy services to producers and consumers of natural gas, crude oil, refined products and petrochemicals has announced that the company has received customer commitments supporting two expansion projects that will further develop the partnership’s ethylene infrastructure around the Houston area’s midstream.

The first is a modification to one of its existing storage facilities. Enterprise is repurposing a large, high-capacity ethylene storage well at its Mont Belvieu, Texas complex. Following completion of the project, which is expected as early as the third quarter of 2018, the 5.3 million barrel cavern will be able to inject/withdraw ethylene at a rate of 2,000 barrels per hour (“BPH”), expandable to 4,000 BPH. There are seven third party ethylene pipelines within two miles of the ethylene well, providing significant connectivity opportunities into the high-capacity system.

Further supporting its ethylene capabilities, the second project is a new, 12-inch diameter pipeline to carry ethylene from Mont Belvieu to Bayport, connecting to Enterprise's ethane export terminal at Morgan's Point. That would give Enterprise the ability to export ethylene on its own with some modifications to the Morgan's Point asset.

As U.S. ethylene production capacity expands over the next three years, access to reliable logistics services will be needed, and Enterprise is ideally positioned to fill the gap, said R.B. Herrscher, senior vice president of Enterprise's petrochemical arm.

These growth capital projects will expand our ethylene system to meet the growing needs of the petrochemical industry. These new storage and transportation assets will also complement their existing capabilities, giving them the foundation for extending their ethylene value chain even further.

Enterprise has already managed to nab customer commitments in support of the projects, the company said.

A number of petrochemical projects have been cropping up along the U.S. Gulf Coast recently. LyondellBasell Industries NV is building a $700 million polyethylene plant in La Porte.

Further south down the coast, a joint venture between Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil Corp. and Saudi Basic Industries Corp. have proposed a $10 billion ethane steam cracker near Corpus Christi, Texas.