[Coal Chemical Industry] The second wave of US ethylene projects "difficult to enjoy" cheap ethane

Veeral Mehta, director of IHS Markit's midstream oil and gas business, said that the ethane production of US cracking projects is about 1.

At the same time, the second wave of ethylene projects in North America is also being launched.

The increase in overseas demand for US ethane will also exacerbate the shortage of ethane supply.

The transportation cost cannot be ignored

Because of the low-cost ethane supply and the complete petrochemical infrastructure, the second wave of cracking projects in the United States are almost all concentrated on the Gulf Coast.

Currently, there is only one pipeline that can transport ethane produced in the Marcellus and Utica regions to the Gulf Coast: Enterprise Products Partners (Enterprise Products Partners) began using the Appalachian to The Texas Express Line (ATEX) 1200-mile pipeline.

However, large amounts of ethane are produced in Marcellus and Utica.

PADD 1 in administrative regions including Pennsylvania and West Virginia still has a large amount of idle supply.

Shell is so far the only company to use this resource.

Brazil Braskem had planned to build an ethane cracker and polyethylene (PE) plant in West Virginia, but it was abandoned in 2019.

Overall, the risk of new ethylene projects in the United States will increase, but compared with the opportunities, the risk is still not high.

(Keyword: U.