PTT Clearing Ohio Cracker Site, Nearby Residents Must Move?
In April 2015 PTT Global announced they had chose a site in Belmont County, OH as the site of for their $5.7 billion ethane cracker complex (see It’s Official: Belmont County Chosen as POSSIBLE Cracker Plant Site). In short order PTT began spending money on the project, doling out $100 million for two engineering firms to design the plant (see PTT CEO Arrives in OH to Announce First $100M for Cracker Plant). As for real estate, part of the chosen site is the 130-acre R.E. Burger Plant, a coal-fired electric generating plant owned by Ohio utility company FirstEnergy. The Burger Plant site is currently being cleared and remediated by FirstEnergy. However, the entire project will need something like 400-500 acres. So where will the extra real estate come from? MDN previously reported that PTT had signed an option to buy 300 acres adjacent to the Burger Plant site owned by Ohio-West Virginia Excavating (see 300 Acres Next to FirstEnergy Site Part of Belmont Cracker Plan). But it seems that still may not be enough. We spotted a story that says residents who live west of the Burger Plant site have been contacted to let them know they may need to move too…
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Don’t worry, you stupid farmers in Belmont County, OH. A really really smart liberal from Yale University (who believes in the fairy tale of man-made global warming) has arrived in your midst and is willing to pay you big money–$20 (yes, twenty dollars)–to participate in a “study” with a pre-determined outcome that you’re being poisoned by fracking. The latest laughable “research study” by a small group of Yale “researchers” is underway in Belmont. The researchers are looking for 100 local yokels who are willing to tell them how they’ve been harmed by fracking, so the researchers can plaster the Yale name on yet another fraudulent study funded by Big Green organizations. We’ve seen this movie before. In 2014 Yale researchers released a similar study of 180 people in Washington County, PA, funded by Heinz Foundation and other Big Green funders (see 
Rice Energy and farmers in rural Belmont County, OH have a great relationship. You can tell by the way each talks about the other. Farmers love Rice because the company is responsible and works with farmers to protect their land and farming livelihood. And the farms of Belmont County have treated Rice Energy well–very well. Yesterday MDN reported on first quarter 2016 production in Ohio (see 
PTT Global Chemical, based in Thailand, announced in April 2015 they are interested in building a $5 billion ethane cracker plant complex in Belmont County, OH (see 
Details are just now coming to light of a new E&P (exploration and production, or drilling) company headquartered in Pittsburgh and focused totally on the Marcellus and Utica region. Until now the company has flown under our radar. The company is American Petroleum Partners (APP)–not to be confused with Aubrey McClendon’s American Energy Partners (AEP)–and is headed by Rice Energy alumnus Varun Mishra, who is the founder and CEO. The big news is that last September Mishra’s new company, founded in 2014, received a major injection of investment capital. Apollo Global Management invested $411 million in APP with the option to double it up to $800 million. MDN has it on very good authority that although APP quietly issued a press release about this last September (see it below), the company has intentionally kept the news quiet. Not any more! Big mouth MDN is blabbing it to the world. Below are the bits and pieces we’ve been able to put together about this newest Utica/Marcellus driller…
A trucking company contracted to haul brine (i.e. naturally occurring water from the depths that comes out of a borehole long after drilling operations are completed) for Gulfport Energy crashed last Wednesday early in the morning and spilled 5,000 gallons of brine onto a field, which found its way into a creek, which emptied into a local reservoir serving Barnesville, OH residents (Belmont County). The trucking company is ECM Energy Services Inc. Barnesville was not drawing any water from the reservoir at the time (they have three local reservoirs from which to draw), so there was no threat to the local human population. Neither was there any impact on the local wildlife population. In fact, it was pretty much a non-event–except for the way it was inaccurately portrayed by media outlets like the Columbus Dispatch, whose reporter either intentionally misrepresented the facts, or was too obtuse to understand the facts…