Environmental impacts of chemical industry development given limited consideration
From an Article by Bill Holland, S&P Global (Platts), June 20, 2019
HIGHLIGHTS —
>> Marcellus, Utica could support four more crackers: US DOE
>> Sequential cracker projects could more easily draw workers
Houston, TX — Appalachian gas producers, under pressure from prices below $3/Mcf, got a boost Thursday with engineering giant Bechtel’s announcement that Thailand’s PTT Global Chemical had awarded it a contract to build an ethane cracker in Belmont County, Ohio, in the heart of the Utica Shale.
The project still needs a final investment decision. But selecting Bechtel as the contractor of the project is a major step toward that decision. Bechtel Oil, Gas & Chemicals Senior Project Manager of Pennsylvania Chemicals Paul Marsden, already working as the manager of Bechtel’s work on Royal Dutch Shell subsidiary Shell Chemical Appalachia’s multibillion-dollar ethane cracker in Monaca, Pennsylvania, made the announcement at the Northeast Petrochemical Conference in Pittsburgh.
Another new cracker would give producers a new outlet for ethane, a natural gas liquid that they blend in the gas stream when it cannot be sold. The project is expected to be capable of producing 1.5 million metric tons per year of ethylene and its derivatives. Shell’s plant will produce up to 1.6 million mt/year of polyethylene. Analysts speculated full capital investment for the project could reach $6 billion.
Charlie Schliebs, managing director of private equity funds at Stones Pier Capital, said the lack of a final investment decision announcement at this stage is to be expected. “These things [FIDs] take a long time, but that project is happening,” Schliebs said.
The US Department of Energy has estimated that the Marcellus and Utica shales can support up to four more crackers, besides PTT’s and Shell’s. Observers expected a final investment on PTT Global’s project more than a year ago. PTT Global could have been watching to see if costs on Shell’s project spiraled out of control.
Asked whether Bechtel would face challenges getting enough labor to work on both the Shell project and the PTT, Marsden said it would be “a challenge. We will have to manage that.” But he noted that the timing of the projects could actually work in the builder’s favor, as having sequential projects lined up could encourage welders and other key workers to relocate to the region instead of simply coming in for one project at a time.
Natural Gas Liquids (NFL)
NGLs, which sell at prices linked to crude oil, are becoming a larger share of the revenues of Appalachian shale gas drillers. Producers see NGL production as the only escape from stable, low natural gas prices. Two Appalachian producers, Range Resources and Antero Resources, are already shipping ethane, propane and butane to Europe via Sunoco Pipeline’s Mariner East family of pipelines.
PTT Global’s US subsidiary, PTTGC America, is using the site of a shuttered FirstEnergy coal-fired power plant in Mead Township of Belmont County as the future cracker’s site. The company has already allocated $100 million on surveys and permits.
Belmont County is the leading natural gas-producing county in Ohio with 2.6 Bcf/d of production in the first quarter, according to Ohio’s Department of Natural Resources.
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See Also: Plastics: The New Coal in Appalachia? | James Bruggers, InsideClimate News, February 25, 2019
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To: All Residents of Eastern OHIO, Southwestern PENNA., and Nothern WEST VIRGINIA …….
Bev Reed here with the Sierra Club. Please join folks who have been organizing around the proposed PTTG ethane cracker plant at our next informational public meeting. See attached flier.
This meeting will be different in that it will be located in St. Clairsville, OH and will follow the Richland Township Trustee meeting at 6pm and the injection well that has been debated recently in the Ohio River Valley that is proposed for the corner of Rt. 40 and Rt 331 in St. Clairsville will be discussed. See rundown of presenters below:
6-7pm: Richland Township Trustee Meeting – the injection well proposed for the intersection of Route 40 and Route 331 in St. Clairsville will be discussed
7-7:30: Dr. Julie Weatherington-Rice will present on “Class II Injection Wells, a Flawed Waste Management Tool For A 19th Century Industry in the Middle of the 21st Century Climate Crisis”.
Dr. Weatherington-Rice’s educational background is in Science Education, Geology, and she holds a doctorate in Soil Science. She is an adjunct Assistant Professor in the Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering department at Ohio State University.
7:30-8:30: Discussion about the proposed PTTG ethane cracker plant in Belmont County, OH and the Appalachian Petrochemical Storage Hub and what the community can do to protect their air, water, and future of the Ohio River Valley.
See you on the 7th of August,
Bev Reed, Sierra Club Intern
Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign
reed.b1@yahoo.com
http://www.nocrackerplantOV.com
See what’s going on at the potential site of the next ethane cracker
Paul J. Gough, Pittsburgh Business Times, February 21, 2020
VIEW SLIDESHOW — 9 slides
It hasn’t yet gotten the final investment decision that supercharged Shell’s Beaver County petrochemical plant, but work and investment is still going on at the proposed site of PTT Global Chemical America’s polyethylene plant in Belmont County, Ohio.
PTT, a Thailand-based petrochemical company, has been considering for the last several years a site to build a plastics plant similar to the one that Shell Chemical is building further up the Ohio River in Potter Township, Beaver County. PTT’s site is the location of a former AEP coal-burning power plant in Mead Township, Ohio, across the river from Moundsville, West Virginia.
A final investment decision could come sometime this year, a spokesman for PTT, Dan Williamson, told the Business Times on Thursday. The project was first announced by then-Ohio Gov. John Kasich in April 2015.
The plant would take Marcellus and Utica shale gas and create ethylene, the building blocks of plastic products. PTT and Daelim Chemical, the South Korean firm that is its partner on the project, have spent about $100 million on engineering design and have received air and waterways discharge permits from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. PTT recently received $20 million from JobsOhio in a grant for revitalization work at the site, at which the former coal plant has long since been demolished and taken away.
“The JobsOhio grant provides the project with the necessary resources to continue engineering work and site preparation that must be done in the coming months,” the PTT spokesman said.
Bechtel Corp., the general contractor and project manager for Shell’s massive construction project in Beaver County, is the engineering, procurement and construction company for the PTT project as well.