Enterprise Products offers US condensate for 2015 to Asian buyers

By SHARON CHO and YUJI OKADA
Bloomberg

Enterprise Products Partners, which got US approval to ship condensate overseas this year, is seeking to sell the lightly processed oil to Asian buyers in 2015, according to three traders with knowledge of the offer.

Enterprise is offering to export 600,000 bbl/month of condensate from the Eagle Ford formation, said the traders, asking not to be identified because the information is confidential.

Potential buyers were required to make their bids by Nov. 22, they said.

Rick Rainey, a spokesman for the company in Houston, didn’t respond to calls and e-mails seeking comment on Nov. 21.

Enterprise is offering to sell the cargoes as pressure increases on federal policy makers to lift the ban on US crude exports amid a shale boom that’s propelled the nation’s output to the highest level in more than three decades.

BHP Billiton plans to export US condensate that’s been run through distillation towers without express permission from regulators, the company said this month.

Houston-based Enterprise has two term contracts with Japanese traders Mitsui and Mitsubishi for condensate supply through the end of 2014, a person who participates in the market said in August.

SK Innovation Co. bought one cargo from Mitsui for November delivery and is seeking more, an official at the South Korean refiner said last month.

Enterprise and Pioneer Natural Resources Co. received rulings this year from the US Commerce Department allowing them to send some stabilized condensate overseas.

The US ban on most crude exports was passed by Congress in 1975 in response to the Arab oil embargo that cut global supplies, quadrupled crude prices and created gasoline shortages in the US at a time when the country’s own crude production was shrinking.

Exports of unprocessed US condensate derived from natural gas, which the US considers to be crude oil, jumped 21% in September from a month earlier, even as total crude shipments declined, Census Bureau data show.

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