Blue Racer’s Natrium Plant to Remain Offline Until Jan 2014
Blue Racer Midstream, a joint venture between Dominion Resources and Caiman Energy II, had an explosion and fire at its Natrium, WV processing plant/fractionation facility in September (see Explosion/Fire at Blue Racer’s Natrium, WV Processing Plant). Since then, at least two Blue Racer customers have found alternatives to using the Natrium facility: Rex Energy and Atlas Resources. More drillers adversely affected by the facility being offline (some of whom complained about the plant closure last week at the DUG East conference in Pittsburgh) may also be in the hunt for alternatives, especially with the announcement the plant will remain offline until “at least January” of 2014. That’s bad news for drillers and for Blue Racer, although they obviously have to repair the facility and ensure whatever caused the explosion/fire does not happen again.
As part of upgrades at the facility, Blue Racer is installing an emergency siren system in the neighboring community of Kent–to warn them of any problems at the plant. The latest on the closed facility and its prospects for re-opening:
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Yesterday West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin was flanked by representatives from Brazilian chemical company Odebrecht to announce the company has chosen a site near Parkersburg, WV (third largest city in the state) to be the potential site of an ethane cracker plant complex. The complex will have an ethane cracker, three polyethylene plants and infrastructure for water treatment and energy co-generation. Gov. Tomblin was justifiably proud to make the announcement, calling it a “game changer” for West Virginia. He’s right.
The Parkersburg News and Sentinel is reporting that WV Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin will make an announcement today that has been years in coming: West Virginia is getting its own “multi-billion-dollar ethane cracker chemical plant” and it will be located in Wood County. If this rumor, which seemingly originates with reliable sources, bears out, this is seriously good news for WV. In fact, we’re jumping up and down happy! For years MDN has been pulling/cheerleading/advocating for WV to get their own cracker–we think they deserve it.
MDN recently brought you rumors (evidence?) that the prospects of Shell building a multi-billion dollar ethane cracker plant in western Pennsylvania were seriously dimming (see 
On an analyst call yesterday, Shell’s outgoing CEO Peter Voser stoked fears that Shell may be ready to pull the plug on the announced ethane cracker plant planned for Monaca, PA. According to Voser, the company will make “hard choices” over the next few quarters about which projects it will fund and build. Specifically, Voser said the company had previously announced three big projects: the ethane cracker in PA, a gas-to-liquids plant in Louisiana, and an LNG plant in Canada. He said Shell cannot build all three projects. Gulp.
Yesterday Range Resources released their financial and operations update for third quarter 2013 (see our companion story from today). Nestled in that update is reference to a new company presentation released yesterday as well, available on the Range website. MDN downloaded it (full copy embedded below) and wow! What a presentation it is. This sucker is loaded with useful charts, maps, bullet points and more. Range has done the industry (and their investors) a great service with this presentation.