MOSCOW (MRC) -- Enterprise Products and Navigator Holdings started service at a new refrigerated ethylene storage tank at an ethylene export terminal on the Houston Shipping Channel, said Chemweek.
The export terminal is owned by a joint venture, in which Enterprise and Navigator Holdings hold equal stakes. The tank has a storage capacity of 30,000 tons, Enterprise and Navigator said. They did not specify if the capacity was listed in short tons or metric tonnes.
The tank will make it faster to load vessels, allowing the terminal to reach its export capacity of 1m tons/year of ethylene, the companies said. Navigator Atlas was the first vessel to use the service. It loaded up on 23 December. Navigator Atlas has a capacity of 21,000 cubic metres of ethylene.
As MRC informed before, Enterprise Products Partners and LyondellBasell Industries said in September 2019 they had executed long-term contracts to support construction of EPD's second propane dehydrogenation plant at the Mont Belvieu, Tex. complex. The decision to build the PDH 2 plant stems from recently executed long-term polymer grade propane (PGP) supply contracts between Enterprise and LyondellBasell Industries N.V.
Besides, we remind that Enterprise Products Partners' Mont Belvieu PDH in Texas restarted from planned maintenance in the first week of December, 2019. The PDH unit went offline for maintenance on November 13, 2019. That day, the company said in a filing with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality that the RAC "B" turbine shut down, which resulted in flaring. The flaring was estimated to last 72 hours. The unit has a capacity of 750,000 mt/year.
Ethylene is a feedstock for producing PE.
According to MRC's DataScope report, PE imports to Russia decreased in January-November 2020 by 17% year on year and reached 569,900 tonnes. High density polyethylene (HDPE) accounted for the greatest reduction in imports.
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