How Many Ethane Pipelines will the Marcellus Shale Support?

In yesterday’s Pittsburgh Business Times, reporter Anya Litvak does a good job of analyzing the prospects for various ethane pipelines that may (or may not) be constructed from the Marcellus region to other geographies in order to process the ethane into ethylene (a raw material used in making plastics). She keyed off the news that the joint venture from El Paso Corp. and Spectra Energy to build a Marcellus Ethane Pipeline Systems (MEPS) didn’t attract enough interest for it to go forward.

However, as MDN mentioned yesterday, Enterprise Products Products is building an ethane pipeline and Chesapeake Energy will be its first customer (see this MDN story). That pipeline is due to go in service in 2014.

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