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Will 2016 be the Year *Somebody* Commits to Building a Cracker?
Will somebody, somewhere PLEASE build the northeast an ethane cracker plant? Pretty please? We noticed a couple of stories that indicate 2016 is THE year that at least one company will likely pull the trigger on an FID–a Final Investment Decision to build an ethane cracker. But which company is likely to do it? Shell? PTT Global? Odebrecht? Leaving Odebrecht’s Parkersburg, WV proposed cracker aside for the moment (a project where we barely detect a pulse), both the Shell plant, planned for Beaver County, PA, and the PTT Global plant, planned for Belmont County, OH, have seen impressive signs of activity in 2015. Which of those two will likely say “yes” in 2016?…
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It’s something straight out of the Tom Cruise movie Minority Report. The federal Environmental Protection Agency has fined the owner of five Pennsylvania natural gas processing plants and one West Virginia plant (six plants total) $50,221 for spills and leaks at the plants–that never happened. The EPA says Elkhorn Gas Processing hasn’t done enough to prevent such incidents from potentially happening, and therefore the EPA is shaking them down and making them pay for possible future violations. Perhaps it’s more like The Godfather than the Minority Report? Talk about an abuse of power! Do you need any further evidence that the Obama EPA is totally out of control?…
Wait a minute! We thought the proposed Odebrecht ethane cracker plant near Parkersburg in Wood County, WV was all but dead. Lifeless. In April the company said it was “re-evaluating plans” to build it (see 
Another piece of the puzzle slides into place with respect to the $5.7 billion ethane cracker project in Belmont County, OH planned by Thailand-based PTT Chemical and financial partner Marubeni Corp. from Japan (see 
An expert speaking at the Utica Summit III yesterday in Stark, OH said he believes the Marcellus/Utica region will see three, possibly four, ethane crackers built. Tom Gellrich of consulting firm TopLine Analytics, a company that “closely follows ethane markets,” said he thinks the first ethane cracker to get built will be the Shell cracker plant in Beaver County, PA…
Shell is currently spending an undisclosed amount of money (millions of dollars) to build a bridge to a site they now own where they may one day build a $2-$3 billion ethane cracker plant in Beaver County, PA (see 
In February 2013 MDN brought you news about plans from Appalachian Resins (AR) to build a polyethelene (PE) manufacturing plant complete with a “baby” ethane cracker. The original plan was to build it in the Wheeling, WV area. However, a year later the location shifted across the border to Monroe County, OH. As late as April of this year AR was still committed to the project (see 
Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest midstream company of them all? As it turns out–it’s MarkWest Energy, the premier midstream company in the Marcellus/Utica! EnergyPoint Research has just published the results from its 2015 Oil & Gas Midstream Services Customer Satisfaction Survey, and MarkWest Energy received the top rating–for the fourth consecutive time. Other northeast midstreamers rating tops in at least one category include Crestwood Midstream and Williams…