With the completion of archaeological digging, Dominion Transmission is ready to move forward with its planned natural gas processing facility on land next to the PPG Industries plant at Natrium in Marshall County some nine miles north of New Martinsville on the Ohio River. ”This will be built on the ground where the archaeological dig took place. This is property Dominion now owns,” spokesman Dan Donovan said.
The Dominion plant – which is expected to be in service by December 2012 – should employ 40-50 full-time workers once complete, in addition to the many construction jobs. Chesapeake Energy, currently the Upper Ohio Valley’s most active natural gas driller, has agreed to supply the Dominion facility with 100 million cubic feet of natural gas per day for processing. Phase one of the project calls for processing 200 million cubic feet per day, and Chesapeake also has the option to provide the additional gas.
The facility will connect to an existing Dominion TL-404 pipeline in Ohio and West Virginia that was recently converted to handle “wet” gas, which is rich in natural gas liquids in addition to the “dry” methane natural gas. The plant is expected to be able to fractionate – or separate the gas from the ethane, propane and butane liquids – about 36,000 barrels of the natural gas liquids daily. Then the focus will be to expand the facility to process a total of 400 million cubic feet of natural gas per day and fractionate 59,000 barrels of natural gas liquids per day.
The Dominion facility should not be confused with local officials’ plans to attract another plant called an ethane cracker, possibly to property near the Bayer site south of the planned facility. At a cracker plant, ethane would be further processed into ethylene to make plastics (polyethylene) and other chemicals.
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Use turbines from Keystone Drill to provide clean and affordable power for the plant.
Also, solve the excess ethane by using it as fuel for the turbine!