Enterprise to Ship More Permian Crude to Texas Gulf Coast

Enterprise Products Partners L.P. will convert one of its pipelines linking the Permian Basin to the Texas Gulf Coast from natural gas liquids (NGL) to crude oil service, the company stated Wednesday.

“We have had strong demand for crude oil transportation, storage and marine terminal services for crude oil production from the Permian Basin,” A.J. “Jim” Teague, CEO of Enterprise’s general partner, said in a written statement. “This repurposing of an NGL pipeline to crude oil service is another example of our system flexibility and the innovation of our employees to respond to customer needs while increasing the distributable cash flow and value of our partnership.”

According to Enterprise, the conversion will give the partnership more than 650,000 barrels per day (bpd) of total crude oil pipeline capacity from the Permian Basin to its crude oil hub in the Houston area. Three Enterprise NGL pipelines already link the Permian to the Texas Gulf Coast: the Seminole Blue, Seminole Red and Chaparral. In addition, the partnership is building a fourth Permian-Texas Gulf Coast NGL pipeline – Shin Oak, which is slated for a Second Quarter 2019 in-service date.

Enterprise stated that Shin Oak will enable it to divert NGL volumes from at least one of its existing NGL pipelines and repurpose the vacated NGL pipeline to ship crude oil. The partnership added that it is currently evaluating which NGL pipeline(s) to repurpose.

Enterprise expects to complete the NGL-to-crude pipeline conversion during the first half of 2020.