Boardwalk's Evangeline restart timing unclear

OREANDA-NEWS. February 10, 2015. Boardwalk Pipeline Partners said it is working to return its recently acquired Evangeline ethylene pipeline back into service, but cannot provide a time frame.

Boardwalk plans to complete the pipeline's inspection by the end of the first quarter, Boardwalk's chief executive Stanley Horton said today.

The Evangeline pipeline was shut down in early January after an inspection pig became stuck in the line. Boardwalk was inspecting the line, which had just returned to operations after being offline from October to December for a leak repair.

The company acquired the pipeline from Chevron for \\$295mn in September. Evangeline carries about 2.6bn lb/yr of ethylene between storage hubs in Texas and Louisiana.

The constraint, coupled with an outage at Williams' Geismar, Louisiana, ethylene plant is pressuring spot ethylene prices in the Williams terminal at Mont Belvieu, Texas, where material is stranded. Ethylene in Mont Belvieu fell from 43?/lb to 35.75?/lb in January. At the same time, spot ethylene in the Choctaw, Louisiana, market traded as high as 45?/lb.

In the fourth quarter, Boardwalk transported 9mn bl of NGLs, up from 8mn bl from the third quarter. The company transported 34mn bl of NGLs for all of 2014.

Boardwalk said it has not been negatively impacted by lower NGL commodity prices, and has seen an increased demand for its storage facilities.

Boardwalk reported a profit of \\$233.6mn in 2014, 7.9pc less than the \\$253.7mn Boardwalk reported in 2013. Fourth quarter profits were \\$36.8mn, \\$17.3mn higher than the \\$19.5mn reported for the same period in 2013.