Beaver County | Energy Companies | Ethane | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Processing Plants | Shell
Shell Cracker Near Pittsburgh Begins “First Fire” Activities
White vapor clouds (i.e. water) will be visible from Shell’s mighty ethane cracker facility beginning this month as the company begins “first fire” activities in a ramp-up to full production at the facility. In a process called “steam blowing” Shell is testing and checking the plant’s steam piping system. Those passing near the plant may also hear noise associated with testing.
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Who are the biggest natural gas sellers in the U.S.? You might be surprised to learn that the biggest *sellers* are not necessarily the biggest *producers* of natural gas. Oh, you might recognize some of the names of the top sellers (BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips). But others might be more of a mystery (Macquarie, Tenaska, Sequent, and J. Aron & Co.). Would it surprise you to learn that BP (i.e. British Petroleum) is the #1 seller of natural gas in the U.S. and has been for many years?
We’ve written plenty about Shell’s mighty ethane cracker plant project happening in Beaver County, PA. It is one of the biggest construction projects currently underway in the entire country. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit one year ago, the construction site closed down, going from 8,000 workers to a skeleton crew of 300. The way Shell handled the closure, and handled the subsequent reopening, is worth understanding and studying.
Make no mistake–Big Oil companies like Exxon, Chevron, and Shell are not friends of the shale industry. Indeed, these so-called supermajors despise smaller competitors called independents. Which explains why these three companies, along with seven other major oil and gas companies, acted like sycophants in a meeting yesterday, obsequiously bowing before dementia Joe’s attack dog Gina McCarthy in pledging their undying support of a carbon tax that they foolishly believe won’t somehow end up shutting down their own companies. For big, important people, the CEOs of these companies sure can be stupid.
In February 2020, Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary Pat McDonnell sent a letter to the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). McDonnell’s letter alleges Shell’s 97-mile, two-legged Falcon pipeline system that will carry ethane to the mighty Shell cracker plant now under construction in Beaver County, PA, “may have been constructed with defective corrosion coating protection.” It’s an explosive charge just coming to light now, more than a year later.
Shell, one of the world’s biggest traders of LNG, released its fifth annual LNG Outlook report for 2021 last week (full copy below). Shell says global demand for liquefied natural gas (LNG) increased from 358 million tonnes (Mt) in 2019 to 360 Mt in 2020. It would have been a lot higher had it not been for the coronavirus pandemic and the shutdown of the worldwide economy. Hauling out the crystal ball, Shell makes a compelling case in the latest Outlook that worldwide demand for LNG will double to 700 Mt by 2040–in under 20 years! Can you imagine?
It’s been a long road, but we’re nearing the end. Shell’s $6 billion ethane cracker plant, officially called the Pennsylvania Petrochemicals Complex (PPC), is close to being done. It’s likely the PPC, located in Beaver County, PA, will be up and running sometime next year. When it is, the market for Marcellus/Utica NGLs will profoundly change. PPC will use an average of 85,000 barrels per day of M-U ethane. Our ethane will no longer be a waste product that many drillers pay to get rid of, but rather a profitable product they sell.
The Community College of Beaver County’s (CCBC) Shell Center for Process Technology, a $5 million state-of-the-art training facility, has just officially opened. While the Center was built to train employees to run the Shell ethane cracker plant, it’s also training people for a myriad of other opportunities too.
In line with a rise of COVID-19 cases in the general population throughout the state of Pennsylvania (and elsewhere), workers at the Shell ethane cracker site in Monaca, PA (near Pittsburgh) have seen a big jump in active coronavirus cases. As of yesterday, the number of active cases stood at 39. Wednesday the number was 31. Shell says most if not all of the cases are coming from offsite and onsite transmission among the 7,000 active workers is not a factor in the rising number.
Radical anti-fossil fuel groups have not given up hope they can somehow, at the last minute, block the $10 billion Shell ethane cracker plant (about a year from being completed) from ever starting up. Perhaps Biden’s “victory” has given them a little boost of irrational exuberance? In 2015 the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued an air permit for the cracker plant. Shell needs to tweak the permit with new information. Antis are asking PA to deny the new tweaks, claiming Shell wants to pollute the region even more. Shell says the tweaks reflect new realities, including LOWER emissions.
A group of anti-fossil nutters who devoted themselves to blocking Marcellus/Utica drilling around the Ambridge Reservoir have turned their attention to the Shell ethane cracker plant in Beaver County. They wanted to stop the cracker from getting built, but given the plant is now 70% built and it’s a 100% guarantee it will get done and go online, the nutters have turned their attention to aggressive monitoring of the plant and the pollution, they say, that will come from it.
Last week we brought you news that Shell had temporarily suspended adding back some 300 workers per week at its ethane cracker construction site in Beaver County, PA following a spike in COVID-19 coronavirus cases (see