HOUSTON/LONDON—Enterprise Products Partners LP (NYSE: EPD) and Navigator Holdings Ltd. (NYSE: NVGS) announced May 29 that construction is now under way on their 50:50 joint venture ethylene export terminal which will be located at Enterprise’s Morgan’s Point, Texas facility on the Houston Ship Channel.

The terminal will have the capacity to export approximately 2.2 billion pounds of ethylene per year. Refrigerated storage for 66 million pounds of ethylene is being constructed on-site and will provide the capability to load ethylene at rates of 2.2 million pounds per hour. Commercial operations are expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2019, one quarter earlier than previously projected.

By providing access to international markets, the new export terminal will facilitate continued growth of domestic ethylene production, which is expected to reach 90 billion pounds per year by 2021. In addition, the terminal being constructed by Enterprise and Navigator will promote supply diversification for expanding markets like Asia, which rely on cost-advantaged U.S. feedstocks.

The high-capacity ethylene salt dome storage facility Enterprise is developing at its complex in Mont Belvieu, Texas is scheduled to begin service in second-quarter of 2019. Upon completion, this storage facility will have a capacity of approximately 600 million pounds with an injection/withdrawal rate of 420,000 pounds per hour and will be designed to enable connections to the eight ethylene pipelines within a half-mile of the Enterprise ethylene storage system. In addition, Enterprise is building a new ethylene pipeline from Mont Belvieu to Bayport, Texas, which is on schedule to begin service in 2020. The section from Mont Belvieu to Morgan’s Point is scheduled to be in service in 2019 to support the export terminal.