Enterprise (EPD) Ships Texas Terminal's 1st Ethylene Cargo

Enterprise Products Partners L.P. (NYSE:EPD) recently shipped the first cargo of ethylene from its Morgan’s Point marine terminal. The facility is a 50-50 joint venture with U.K.-based Navigator Holdings Ltd. (NYSE:NVGS) , a LNG carrier provider. The shipment of 25 million pounds of ethylene in Navigator Europa tanker will reach Japanese company Marubeni Corporation.

The terminal can load 2.2 billion pounds of ethylene per year from two docks. The facility is connected with Enterprise Products’ Mont Belvieu complex in Texas. Currently, a new refrigerated storage tank is being built at the site with 66 million pounds of ethylene capacity, which is expected to be completed in the December quarter of this year. This move can ramp up the facility’s loading capacity rate to 2.2 million pounds of ethylene per hour.

Moreover, the partnership is further extending its pipeline and logistics system for ethylene in South Texas with two projects. It is developing a 24-mile pipeline connecting Mont Belview and Bayport, which will support the Morgan’s Point terminal. In addition to that, Enterprise Products is planning to develop the 90-mile Baymark Pipeline connecting Bayport to Markham. Both the pipelines are expected to come online in fourth-quarter 2020, which will help local producers to reach the partnership’s trading hub easily.

The Morgan’s Point export facility taps domestic NGL growth, which is powered by the shale revolution. Owing to this, the United States became a global leader of ethylene output, which is vastly used in the petrochemical industry. Production of the organic compound is expected to surpass the 100 billion pound per annum mark by 2025. Moreover, rising production of petrochemical gases is expected to create a lot of skilled jobs in the locality.

The partnership has around 50,000 miles of pipelines, along with 260 million barrels of liquids and 14 billion cubic feet of natural gas storage capacity. The stock has risen 5.4% in the past year against the 3.9% decline of the industry it belongs to.

Zacks Rank & Key Picks

The partnership currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks in the energy sector include CNX Resources Corporation (NYSE:CNX) and Antero Midstream (NYSE:AM) , each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

CNX Resources’ earnings for the current year have witnessed four upward revisions in the past 60 days versus no movement in the opposite direction.

Antero Midstream’s fourth-quarter 2019 earnings growth is expected to be 130%.

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