Enterprise Products has disclosed that it is considering building a $5 billion ethylene cracker on the US Gulf Coast.
The proposed cracker would have the capacity to produce 2 million tons of ethylene per year, Enterprise said, making it one of the largest in the world.
Currently, Enterprise is considering the projects but has not made any final investment decisions, said Rick Rainey, Enterprise’s vice president of public relations.
Tentative plans for the ethane cracker call for construction to begin in the second quarter of 2024 and commercial operations to start in 2027, according to the applications.
Rainey said Enterprise is considering multiple sites in Beaumont as well as in other states.
Enterprise operates an ethane pipeline and storage system on the Gulf Coast. It also operates the Morgan’s Point ethane export terminal on the Houston Ship Channel.
The company has already started getting involved in chemicals. At the end of 2020, it opened an ethylene export terminal at Morgan’s Point. It built a propane dehydrogenation facility with 750,000 t of annual propylene capacity in Mont Belvieu, Texas, in 2018, and is planning another such facility for 2023. Enterprise completed a butane dehydrogenation plant in 2019.
In March, KBR Inc. agreed to license its catalytic olefin and steam cracking technologies to a “leading midstream company” that plans to build a cracker with the capacity of 2.4 million tons per year, industry publication Chemical Engineering News reported.
It’s unclear whether that company is Enterprise or whether yet another large midstream company is crafting its own plans for what would be the world’s biggest ethane cracker. Rainey said Enterprise had no information to share on its potential use of KBR technology.