Enterprise Products Partners L.P. and Navigator Holdings Ltd. announced that they have entered into a 50/50 joint venture to build a new ethylene export facility along the U.S. Gulf Coast that will have the capacity to export approximately 1 million tons of ethylene per year. Refrigerated storage for 30,000 tons of ethylene will be constructed on-site and will provide the capability to load ethylene at rates of 1,000 tons per hour. The facilities are expected to be in service by the first quarter of 2020.

The project is supported by long-term contracts with anchor customers that include U.S. ethylene producer Flint Hills Resources and a major Japanese trading company. Enterprise is also developing a high-capacity ethylene salt dome storage facility at its complex in Mont Belvieu, Texas. This storage facility will have a capacity of approximately 600 million pounds with an injection/withdrawal rate of 420,000 pounds per hour.

The storage facility is expected to begin service in the first quarter of 2019 and will be designed to enable connections to the eight ethylene pipelines within a half-mile of the Enterprise ethylene storage system. In addition, Enterprise is building a new ethylene pipeline from Mont Belvieu to Bayport, Texas, which is scheduled to begin service in 2020.