Shell Announces “Open Season” for Potential PA Ethane Cracker
Time for Shell to get serious about whether or not they plan to build a $2 billion ethane cracker plant in Monaca, PA. Shell announced yesterday they will have something akin to a pipeline open season, a period of time when drillers can bid on capacity to send the plant (should it be built) their locally-produced ethane supplies. The bidding period will run from August 27 through October 4 and will give Shell a good idea of just how much ethane will be available for them to “crack” at the plant.
Shell reports they already have commitments from CONSOL Energy, Noble Energy, Seneca Resources and Hilcorp Energy should they decide to build the cracker. Shell is still about a year away from a final final final final decision (see our June 2012 story – Shell: Final Decision on Cracker Plant Still 18-24 Mo. Away). The next few months are likely to be crucial to that decision…
Read More “Shell Announces “Open Season” for Potential PA Ethane Cracker”
Ohio’s dream to be the future host of an ethane cracker plant is still very much alive, according to U.S. Sen. Rob Portman from Ohio. Portman, along with Greg Sullivan, area manager for MarkWest Energy, spoke at the Ohio Mid-Eastern Governments Association meeting yesterday. According to Sullivan, a source to ship the ethane produced by their plant to when it separates the ethane from the natural gas liquid stream is “our big challenge.” MarkWest’s only current option is to ship it to Canada via the Mariner West Sunoco pipeline (see 
Who doesn’t love a Top 10 list? David Letterman has built a career on them. There are a lot of different ways to measure who the biggest drillers are in Pennsylvania–the Top 10 drillers. Recently, the Pittsburgh Business Times took a fresh stab at it. They counted how many shale gas wells have been permitted for drilling companies. It doesn’t mean the wells have been drilled yet, but you don’t spend big bucks on a permit to not drill. We can safely assume if it’s permitted, it either has been or soon will be drilled.
In what looks to be like more backpedaling, PA Gov. Tom Corbett told the Pittsburgh Business Times on Friday he now doesn’t expect a final decision on whether Shell will build a new $2 billion ethane cracker plant in Monaca, PA until 2014. Last December he said Shell needed another six months (until the end of June) for lawyers “dotting I’s and crossing T’s” (see 
More pipelines for both dry and wet gas, and perhaps just as important, a new cryogenic gas processing plant is coming to northwestern PA courtesy of a brand new joint venture partnership between midstream giant Williams and exploration & production giant Shell. The new jv will service not only Shell (the first customer to be signed), but also other energy producers in the area. It will be aimed at both the Marcellus and Utica Shale in the region.
Two years ago, an informal group of high level leaders from both the Marcellus drilling industry (companies like Shell, CONSOL, Chevron and EQT) sat down with high level people from organizations trying to stop shale drilling (organizations like the Heniz Endowment, PennFuture, GASP and the Clean Air Taskforce), to see if both sides could agree on standards that would tell the world, “this activity is safe to do.” There were times, early on, when both sides thought the effort would be fruitless. But somewhere along the way, they “came together” and formed what was officially announced yesterday: