When Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) kicked off construction last month of its largest U.S. chemical investment, a trio of factories outside Houston, business unit chief Steven Pryor said he’d never seen a project with better economics. By the time the plants start operating in 2017, the numbers may not look so rosy. Exports are poised to absorb the country’s excess ethane, a natural gas liquid that’s become the main raw material for U.S. chemical makers as increased drilling in shale formations makes it abundant and cheap. “Ethane exports have the potential to get really big,” Ben Nolan, a Chicago-based shipping analyst at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., said by phone Sept. 4. “What people are assuming...
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