Petrochemical Feedstocks

Last week we covered what seemed like an onslaught of U.S. ethane export developments – Enterprise’s plans to build an ethane export facility on the Gulf Coast, INEOS’s agreement to take a portion of that facility’s capacity, INEOS’s expansion of its order for more ethane ships, and still more ethane ships ordered by Navigator Gas. What does all of this mean for the U.S. ethane market?  Could 240 Mb/d of ethane export capacity due to begin operations in Q3 2016 shift the future of the entire U.S. ethane market?  In today’s blog we assess the impact of large scale exports on the market for U.S. ethane.

We’ve done several blogs over the past months about the impact of the back-to-back crop drying and Polar Vortex anomalies on natural gas liquids (NGL) prices in general and propane prices in particular.  Today we are going to take a walk further downstream and look at how increasing propane exports, the weather related anomalies and subsequent price spikes shifted the petrochemical feedstock slate.    From mid-year 2013 to early 2014, huge volumes of propane were backed out of the petrochemical sector, replaced for the most part by ethane.  These swings have important implications for the future consumption of NGL feedstocks by petchems.  In today’s blog, we assess petrochemical feedstock switching in the 2013-14 timeframe, and beyond.