Beaver County | Energy Companies | Ethane | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Processing Plants | Shell
Shell Announces Full PA Cracker Plant Will Go Live in 2022
We finally have word from the metaphorical horse’s mouth about when we can expect the mighty, multi-billion dollar ethane cracker plant under construction in Beaver County, PA will go online and become fully functional. According to Shell CEO Ben Van Beurden, the cracker will become “fully operational” sometime in 2022. However, it’s not just a flip-the-switch kind of thing. Bits and pieces of the plant will come online at different times, including a key piece coming online “in the coming weeks.” In fact, some of the pieces are already functional.
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New Fortress Energy (NFE), the brainchild of billionaire Wes Edens, came out of nowhere just a few years ago to become one of the world’s leading natural gas infrastructure and logistics operators, delivering natural gas (typically LNG) to customers in a number of other countries. NFE also builds and operates gas-fired electric plants in some of those countries. They own most of the supply chain, from liquefying the gas to shipping it, unloading it, and using it in plants built and operated by the company. We track NFE for their plan to build an LNG liquefaction plant in Bradford County, PA (northeastern part of the state). What’s happening with that project?
Just at the time U.S. exports of LNG are once again ramping up, along comes a “bipartisan” group of legislators proposing a bill to require some LNG exports (as well as some petroleum exports) to be transported from our shores on U.S.-built and U.S.-flagged LNG carriers. The problem is, none currently exist! This is yet another massive screwup coming from some who mean well, and some who don’t. Some of the people backing the bill, like hapless Sen. Bob Casey (from Pennsylvania) likely don’t know this bill will destroy exports of Marcellus/Utica molecules. He’s just too dull to comprehend it. But others, we suspect, know exactly what this bill would do.
All three M-U states received permits to drill new shale wells last week. Pennsylvania received 18 new permits for three drillers, all of them in the western part of the state. Ohio received 5 new permits for two different drillers. And West Virginia received 5 new permits, all for the same company in the same county on the same well pad.
NATIONAL: Recent completions of natural gas pipeline projects increase transportation capacity; Shale producers find themselves in unusual position; Natural gas in storage set to decrease by about 30% of five-year average.