PPG Chemical Plant in Marshall County, WV Gets a $50M Marcellus Shale Payday

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PPG Industries, a $12 billion global supplier of paints, coatings, optical products, specialty materials, chemicals, glass and fiber glass, is about to get another $50 million from the gas beneath one of it’s chemical plants located in Marshall County, WV.

PPG Industries could earn about $50 million from its natural gas drilling contract with Houston, Texas-based Gastar Exploration, including $10 million in cash.

Gastar plans to drill 30 horizontal wells on roughly 3,300 acres of PPG property near PPG’s Natrium chemical plant in Marshall County, with construction and drilling set to begin in the fall.

“We are pleased to enter into this project and look forward to working with PPG’s staff to fully develop the Marcellus formation under their property,” said Gastar’s President and Chief Executive Officer, J. Russell Porter. “This lease, when combined with our existing leasehold in Marshall and Wetzel counties, helps Gastar create a large and mostly contiguous block of acreage within an area that is ultra-rich in ‘natural gas liquids’ and condensate yields.”

The valuable natural gas liquids – ethane, propane, butane, and pentanes – are found in northern West Virginia’s “wet” Marcellus Shale gas, and are the byproducts from natural gas processing.

*The Intelligencer/Wheeling News-Register (Mar 1) – PPG Inks $50M Drilling Deal