JupiterMLP, a privately held midstream company that provides crude oil producers and gas plants with logistics and offtake solutions, has secured a funding commitment from Charon System Advisors sufficient to build the 1 million barrel per day capacity Jupiter Pipeline from the Permian Basin to the Port of Brownsville, Texas.
Jupiter has completed engineering, design, and right-of-way planning for the pipeline, which is expected to be operational in late third quarter 2020 — with origination points near the Texas towns of Midland, Pecos and Crane, and offtake points near Three Rivers, Texas. As designed, it will be the only pipeline out of the Permian Basin that can access all three deepwater ports in Texas (Houston, Corpus Christi and Brownsville) and will have direct access to a fully capable VLCC loading facility.
Charon’s investment comes on the heels of Jupiter announcing in May that it had secured all initial governmental and regulatory permits to load/unload vessels of up to 65,000 deadweight tons, or Panamax-sized vessels, at the Jupiter Export Terminal. Jupiter already had secured permits to construct more than 2.8 million barrels of storage in Brownsville and has additional permits on file to increase its storage footprint to more than 6 million barrels, of the potential 10 million barrels of storage capacity. The company also is in the final stages of securing a permit to construct a 170,000-barrel per day processing facility, which is designed to process light U.S. shale crude into on-spec U.S. gasoline and ultralow sulfur diesel.
Albert Johnson, president of Jupiter Pipeline, said in a statement, “With the backing by Charon and the firm commitments that Jupiter has already secured on the Jupiter Pipeline, we will be holding an open season for the remaining capacity in November.”
Tom Ramsey, CEO of Jupiter, added, “From our first purchase crude oil business and Jupiter Transport trucking company, to construction of the Jupiter pipeline, its connections in the Permian and the ability to load VLCCs offshore near Brownsville, we are executing on our long-term, global strategy of connecting the ‘Wellhead to the World’.”
In additional news, John Calce, Jupiter’s founder and president of JupiterMLP, was appointed chairman of the board of directors, and Albert Johnson, who joined Jupiter in March 2018 as executive vice president of business development, was appointed president of Jupiter Pipeline.