Enterprise Products Partners LP plans to significantly expand its crude oil storage and distribution infrastructure serving the Southeast Texas refinery market. The expansion will be completed in phases with final completion expected in the fourth quarter of 2014.
Upon completion, Enterprise will be uniquely positioned to provide refiners with access to an integrated system offering supply diversification, significant storage capacity and a high-capacity distribution system that will be pipeline-connected to Southeast Texas refineries having an aggregate capacity of approximately 3.6 million barrels per day. In addition, Enterprise’s Crude Oil Houston (ECHO) storage facility, which will be expanded to over six million barrels of capacity, will have access to Enterprise’s marine terminal at Morgan’s Point on the Houston (TX) Ship Channel.
Historically, these refineries have been primarily supplied by waterborne imports of crude oil. With the success of North American producers, crude oil from the Eagle Ford, Permian, Midcontinent, Bakken, and Canada are flowing into Southeast Texas and displacing the waterborne crude oil imports. As production from these regions continues to grow, there will be a significant increase in crude oil bound for the Gulf Coast market, which currently lacks sufficient storage and has a fractured and constrained distribution system to handle these varying grades of crude oil.
This expansion includes an additional four million barrels of new crude oil storage capacity at Enterprise’s ECHO and Bertron facilities and approximately 55 miles of 24-inch and 36-inch pipeline to directly connect ECHO with the major refineries in the Southeast Texas market.
“Refiners in the Southeast Texas market are responding to the dynamics and opportunities created by the rapidly changing source and grades of crude oil supplies,” said AJ “Jim” Teague, chief operating officer of Enterprise. “We have received strong interest from our customers to expedite the development of additional storage capacity and distribution capability to facilitate their consumption of the different grades of crude oil and to provide flow and quality assurance to their refineries. We believe ECHO will become the critical link between the new pipelines bringing supplies from the producing basins and the end use refining market in Southeast Texas as it is located at the crossroads of crude oil moving from north to south and from west to east.”