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Exxon Mobil Sniffing Around SWPA to Build Second Cracker Plant
Leave it to ace reporter Paul Gough from the Pittsburgh Business Times to unearth some earth-shattering news–that ExxonMobil is actively looking at locations in Beaver County, Pennsylvania to potentially build a second multi-billion dollar cracker plant. Shell is already well along in building the region’s first ethane cracker–in Monaca (Beaver County). Will lightning strike twice for the good citizens of Beaver County? Maybe!
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The “bad old days” of low low prices for natural gas have returned to the Marcellus/Utica region–at least temporarily. During the past few weeks natural gas prices at Appalachian supply hubs Dominion South and Tennessee Zone 4 Marcellus fell from about $2 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) in mid-September to lows of 76¢/MMBtu and 65¢/MMBtu, respectively, on October 4. Ouch. Why the drop-like-a-rock in price? For a variety of reasons, but there are two main factors…
According to the EIA (U.S. Energy Information Administration, our favorite government agency), in the coming month of November, the U.S.’s seven major shale plays will produce a combined 84 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of natural gas, and 8.9 million barrels of oil per day–a brand new record high for each. The real eye-opener is that while the M-U will produce 132 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of additional shale gas, the Permian Basin in West Texas and New Mexico will produce an additional 210 MMcf/d of shale gas!
Mountaineer Gas it close to completing Phase One of its Eastern Panhandle Expansion project in West Virginia, a 22.5-mile, 10-inch-diameter steel pipeline from Morgan County to Berkeley County. The project is designed to deliver Marcellus/Utica natural gas via local distribution channels to a new $150 million industrial facility in Berkeley County, WV, and to provide “a redundant supply” of gas to some 6,000 local businesses and residents in the Tri-State area. The system is supposed to be fed by a short 3.5-mile pipeline from Columbia Gas running under the Potomac River from Maryland into WV.
Sam Thigpen, founder and CEO of Thigpen Solutions, revealed something at Gulf Coast Energy Forum in New Orleans that is a revelation for us. Starting last winter, Thigpen and his Texas-based company has been shipping LNG to National Grid and their Long Island, NY operation during the wintertime, so that National Grid doesn’t run out of gas for its existing customers. In fact, Thigpen has a five-year contract to supply National Grid’s Long Island customers with (expensive) LNG.
For residents who want to build a new home or business in either Northampton or Easthampton (Hampshire County), Massachusetts, and connect to natural gas supplies–you can forget about it. Columbia Gas of Massachusetts has announced that a moratorium on new natural gas customers in those two municipalities, in place since 2015, will become permanent. Citing “cost impacts and benefits” to customers, Columbia’s president says the company will no longer build what it called the “alternate backfeed” pipeline project–a 6-mile pipe that would have run between Agawam and Holyoke to supply Northampton and Easthampton.
In August, Enterprise Products Partners, the builder and operator of the Appalachia-to-Texas Express (ATEX) ethane pipeline, launched an open season to gauge interest in expanding the capacity along the 1,192-mile pipeline (see 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Eastern Ohio’s low oil & gas production counties; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: New study blames some Permian Basin earthquakes on fracking; NATIONAL: U.S. oil and gas jobs fall as drilling declines; Warren and Sanders, policy mates; The crackdown on illegal immigration is hurting oil drillers; California and New York show the ugly face of ‘progress’; Technology takes over tight oil; Political challenges send chill through US gathering of LNG interests; INTERNATIONAL: Sales of electric vehicles in China are slowing; Climate worship is nothing more than rebranded paganism.