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Waiting Game: Cracker Plants Talk to Property Owners
West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio are all in the hunt to land an ethane cracker plant in their respective states (see the long list of MDN stories on a potential cracker plant in the Marcellus/Utica Shale region). According to WV Commerce Secretary Keith Burdette, Shell and another unnamed company are now in talks with private property owners. That is, the deals are now being negotiated, and it’s a waiting game to see the outcome.
All three states have offered huge tax incentives to land the plant. Shell originally set January for an announcement, but changed it a few weeks ago to be February.
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Funny how those who oppose drilling want there to be plenty of rules (i.e. regulations) that would govern every aspect of drilling, but when it comes to following rules themselves, they don’t want to. Witness the arrest yesterday of Josh Fox, so-called documentary film maker and creator of the anti-fracking propaganda film Gasland when he tried to film a House Science, Space and Technology subcommittee hearing without proper credentials:
In areas where there is active drilling, like northeast and southwest Pennsylvania, near the end of completing a gas well is a process called flaring—when some of the gas and other impurities are burned off. Sometimes flaring a well, which results in a large flame coming out of the well, can be seen up to 10 miles away, which catches neighbors by surprise. Tony Gaudlip from Range Resources explains the flaring process, and why it’s not used as much as it once was.
Cabot Oil & Gas has accused the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of “cherry picking” old water test data to justify its intrusion into Dimock, PA. For a quick backgrounder on the situation in Dimock and why Cabot is being blamed by some for pollution of a handful of local water wells in the area, 
The talk coming from the largest drillers in the Marcellus Shale is that they will scale back drilling activities in the dry (methane only) portions of the Marcellus Shale play and instead focus on the wet (liquids-rich) portion.