Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "US Ethane Export Report 2016-2020" report to their offering.

U.S. Market Innovations in oil and gas drilling have led to lower production costs for crude oil and natural gas in the US, leading to surpluses of ethane and ethylene supplies. Surplus ethane output is expected to reach nearly 700,000 barrels per day by 2020, even after the commissioning of new ethylene production capacity. The new additional ethylene production capacity planned by 2020 is projected atmore than 10 million metric tons.

The supply of ethane is tight outside the U.S., particularly in the Middle East, and no ethane export projects have been announced outside the U.S. The North Sea gas production volume is declining, and gas production in the Norway region will begin to follow suit, declining by an aggregated 6% by 2019. Output in the U.K. is in decline with total oil and gas output currently at a third of 2009's output. The U.K. petrochemical industry imports close to 600,000 tons of ethane/year from Norway and has already contracted ethane supply from the new U.S. terminals.

To enable import of U.S. ethane, infrastructure upgrades and expansion of sea terminals at Grangemouth and Tees have occurred. This study projects the logistics costs for the U.S. ethane supply. Beginning in 2016, INEOS and SABIC will commence import of U.S. ethane into northwest Europe. Both INEOS and SABIC are converting steam crackers from naphtha to ethane feedstock. Borealis is continuing with ethane crackers, but installing ethane import terminals to support their ethane supply versus the decline in ethane production from the North Sea production.

Reliance Industries is establishing U.S. ethane supply capability to steam crackers in India. INEOS, SABIC, and Reliance will be primary shippers out of Enterprise Products' Morgan's Point facility. An estimated 85% of Enterprises' announced capacity is reported as already under firm take or pay contracts.

Companies Mentioned

- Axiall/Lotte

- Braskem

- Chevron Phillips

- Dow Chemical

- ExxonMobil

- Formosa

- Oxichem/Mexichem

- PTT/Marubeni

- Sasol

- Shell

- Shin-Etsu

- Total

- Williams

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