WV Invests $250K in Marcellus Ethane Processing Plant
The state of West Virginia is investing $250K in a company that turns ethane from Marcellus gas wells into ethylene. Think of it as a “mini-cracker plant”. Shell and other large energy companies are looking to establish large cracker plants in the Marcellus region—a chemical plant that will take over $1 billion to build (see this MDN story). In the meantime, smaller and leaner companies are providing some of the same kinds of service a cracker plant provides—at much less of an investment. Aither Chemicals is one of those companies.
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Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon on Monday appeared on Jim Cramer’s Mad Money show on CNBC to talk about the company’s new, oil-rich discovery in the Utica Shale of eastern Ohio. He had some fascinating things to say, including that he expects there to be some 25,000 wells drilled in the Ohio Utica Shale, and that there will be $10 billion per year for at least 20 years (or $200 billion) of investments in the Ohio Utica Shale alone. Yikes! No wonder Gov. John Kasich is “gushing” about Chesapeake’s discovery. An investment of 1/5 of a trillion dollars is a major big deal for Ohio—not only for landowners but also for businesses and for those who will be employed by drilling and associated industries. You cannot overstate how important this discovery is.
One of the favorite arguments used as a smokescreen by those opposed to Marcellus drilling is the classic class warfare argument. But it takes a lot of mental gymnastics to make it work in this case as the people who are supposedly the “fat cats” and the “lucky few winners of life’s lottery” are typically family farmers who have been scraping by for generations, just trying to hold on to the land they love. The fact that some of them “get rich” from gas drilling just doesn’t sit right with the elite city-dwellers. Kind of invokes images of the Beverly Hillbillies.