The first gas carrier to load ethane at the new Morgan’s Point export terminal is JS Ineos Insight, which has a 15,000-ton or 27,500-cubic-meter capacity, some traders told OPIS on Thursday. The ship is owned by Ineos, and it is one of the eight ships built by Ineos to deliver shale gas from the U.S. to Europe.
 
JS Ineos Insight is now sailing to the U.S. Gulf Coast from Norway, and it is expected to arrive in Texas around Aug. 2. Besides Morgan’s Point, Ineos is also loading ethane at Marcus Hook for delivery to Europe.
 
The air emission event as a result of the startup process is expected to last about three days. It began at 1 p.m. local time Tuesday.
 
EPP had expected the new terminal to be operational in the third quarter of this year.
 
Contaminants include carbon monoxide, ethane, methane, nitrogen oxide and propane.
 
The new NGL export terminal has a capacity of 200,000 b/d, and 90% of its operating capacity has been contracted, according to EPP last year.
 
However, the operational startup is expected to slow, meaning limited export flow at the beginning, and the terminal should reach its maximum capacity in the latter half of 2017, industry sources said.
 
On the shipping front, the market would need more Very Large Gas Carriers to be delivered to facilitate this export move to Asia or Europe from the U.S. Gulf Coast. Some major players, including Reliance and Oriental Energy are waiting for their ship deliveries to make that much anticipated arbitrage move to Asia, they said.
 
Also, some crackers abroad may take some time to convert to ethane from naphtha, with some projects in Brazil and the U.K. slated for completion in the second half of 2017, sources said.
 
The U.S. is facing a glut of NGL supplies, with producers in the Midwest eyeing an incremental supply push to the coastal markets for exports. However, logistics issues present a bottleneck for higher export flow, besides arbitrage economics.