Ethane Shipment Record Set; LPG Export Udpate -- January 20, 2021

See update here. 

Ethane: largest single shipment of ethane heads to China after loading at US export facility. S&P Global Platts.Data points:

• 911,000 bbls of ethane
  
• VLEC Seri Everest on maiden voyage
• Panama Canal
• loaded at Energy Transfer's terminal in Nederland, TX
• VLEC: very large ethane carrier
• will reach destination by mid-February
• ET's Marcus Hook facility in Pennsylvania is also capable of handling VLECs
  
• en route to Satellite Petrochemical's Lianyungang ethane cracker in Jiangsu Province, China
• the export facility is operated by Energy Transfer under a joint venture with Satellite;
• the achievement follows the loading of the first VLGC powered by liquefied petroleum gas at Enterprise Products Partners' hydrocarbon terminal on the Houston Ship Channel in December.
• US Gulf Coast ethane climbed to the highest level in more than 20 weeks Jan. 15, at 25 cents/gal, amid increased demand for ethane as a viable alternative to normal butane and propane for the petrochemical sector. Prior to that, January barrels of LPG had been on an upward trajectory, spurring the demand for ethane.
• Stripping ethane and propane from the natural gas produced at the wellhead creates two more revenue streams in addition to the dry gas that remains. US exports of NGLs and their byproducts to Asia have flourished in recent years. Producers in key US shale basins where increasing amounts of associated gas are being lifted with oil, including the prolific Permian Basin in West Texas, rely on those outlets for their supplies. 
• For 2021, global NGL supply is expected to retract by 1% compared with 2020 as production curtailments hit the US, according to Platts Analytics. Ultimately, global NGL supply is not expected to return to 2019 annual levels until 2023.      

Natural gas:

• the very large gas carrier BW Gemini departed December 13, 2020, from Enterprise's terminal
• loaded with 590,000 bbls of LPG, including cargo and fuel
• January 19, 2021: the vessel was in the north Pacific
• destination: Japan's port of Chiba