Shell Officials Optimistic Cracker Plant Will Attract New Business
Earlier this week, Shell announced its mighty ethane cracker plant in Beaver County, PA (near Pittsburgh) is finally, ten years after first announcing, fully operational and producing plastic pellets (see Shell Officially Launches Pa. Cracker Plant Using M-U Ethane). Part of the raison d’etre for granting the plant a $1.7 billion break on taxes for 25 years is to lure manufacturers (and investments, and jobs) to locate nearby, in PA (see Gov. Corbett’s PR Campaign for $1.7B Cracker Plant Tax Break). So far, frankly, that hasn’t happened. At least not in a big way. But don’t worry, says Shell execs. They are “optimistic” the region will attract new manufacturing plants that want to use Shell’s plastic pellets.
Read More “Shell Officials Optimistic Cracker Plant Will Attract New Business”
Anti-fossil fuelers continue to pressure the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (and Pennsylvania itself) over the grievous sin of approving the Shell ethane cracker plant project (see 
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has assessed a $670,000 fine plus extra “cost recovery” charges of nearly $30,000 against the Shell Pipeline Company for work done between 2019 and 2021 on Shell’s Falcon ethane pipeline project. The DEP says that a series of inspections showed “failure to comply” with this paperwork requirement and that paperwork requirement. There were a few instances of erosion into “waters of the commonwealth.” But in the end, the DEP acknowledges, “no visual aquatic impacts were observed.” No muddy water. No dead fishies. No dead salamanders. No dead nothing. In other words, the DEP fined Shell for nothing–no lasting impacts on the environment from the work done to construct the Falcon pipeline.
Some 225 hypocritical nutters were whipped into a frenzy by Big Green and its so-called Beyond Plastics campaign during a Zoom call Tuesday night to “prepare” for the startup of Shell’s mighty ethane cracker plant in Monaca, PA. It was really quite hilarious. There was talk of nurdle patrols, “sacrifice zones,” and celebrations over defeating Joe Manchin’s permitting reform bill. Why hypocritical? Because every single person on the call was using a computer or phone made out of (wait for it)….plastics. The clothes on their bodies and shoes on their feet are made largely from plastics. The cars and boats and paraphernalia they use to hunt down evidence of environmental plastics pollution from the cracker plant–all made from plastics. We wonder, Do they know how stupid they look?
In June, a Shell executive told the Appalachian Energy Innovation Collaborative conference that the company’s Pennsylvania ethane cracker project was 98% done and would be fully online within “a couple of months” (see 
One of the big promises of building a multi-billion dollar ethane cracker plant project is its ability to act like a magnet attracting other petrochemical and manufacturing plants to locate near it, using the outputs of the ethane cracker as their inputs. According to an article appearing in the Pittsburgh Business Times, the great promise of attracting more businesses to the southwestern PA region with the construction of the Shell cracker plant has not, so far at least, resulted in a big influx of new businesses.
RBN Energy’s own Rusty Braziel (the R and the B in RBN) is back with another powerhouse post on the RBN blog site. This one is about the market for ethane. For those new to MDN, ethane is one of the primary NGLs (natural gas liquids) that comes out of the ground along with oil and natural gas. Propane and butane are a couple of other common NGLs produced in the Marcellus/Utica. Ethane is the raw material used to produce ethylene, and ethylene is turned into plastic pellets that are used to manufacture thousands of different products you use every day of your life. The ethane market is, according to Braziel, “in turmoil” right now. Ethane prices are up, almost double since January, and are at their highest level in 10 years. Ethane traditionally has been a waste product for many M-U drillers. Now it’s an important source of revenue.
As we told you last week, Energy Transfer, during its first quarter update, spoke about the now-completed Mariner East pipeline system that flows NGLs, including ethane, propane, and butane, from eastern Ohio and southwestern Pennsylvania all the way to southeastern PA and the Marcus Hook terminal (see 
Energy Transfer, one of the biggest pipeline and midstream companies in the U.S., issued its quarterly update yesterday. Of particular interest to us was the honorable mention the Mariner Easter (ME) project received. Construction of the final phase of the Mariner East project was completed in 1Q22, bringing Energy Transfer’s total NGL capacity on the Mariner East pipeline system to more than 365,000 barrels per day, including ethane. NGLs, including those flowing through the ME system, along with LNG, were the two dominant themes running through yesterday’s update.
JobsOhio, a private nonprofit largely funded by the profits from state liquor sales, is dedicated to attracting new jobs and investments to the state. JobsOhio has been a big part of the plan to get an ethane cracker built in the state, a project currently on hold. JobsOhio still believes there will be an ethane cracker plant built on a site prepared for that purpose in Belmont County, Ohio. PTT Global Chemical is supposed to be the one building the plant. However, a stray comment by the President and CEO of JobsOhio, JP Nauseef, confirms what we’ve thought for a long time…
In January MDN reported comments by a Shell representative who said the mighty ethane cracker the company is building in Monaca (Beaver County), PA was 95% complete (see 
PTT Global Chemical has reimbursed JobsOhio, the state’s private economic development office, $20 million for failing to make a final investment decision (FID) to build a multi-billion-dollar ethane cracker plant project in Belmont County, OH. JobsOhio paid Bechtel Corp. $20 million in 2019 to complete site engineering and site preparation for the project, with a promise from PTT that it would soon make an FID and move forward with construction. That never happened, so PTT is paying up because it didn’t live up to its end of the bargain. Interestingly, PTT maintains it is “committed to building the multi-billion dollar project.” Right.