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Shell Officials Optimistic Cracker Plant Will Attract New Business

Earlier this week, Shell announced its mighty ethane cracker plant in Beaver County, PA (near Pittsburgh) is finally, ten years after first announcing, fully operational and producing plastic pellets (see Shell Officially Launches Pa. Cracker Plant Using M-U Ethane). Part of the raison d’etre for granting the plant a $1.7 billion break on taxes for 25 years is to lure manufacturers (and investments, and jobs) to locate nearby, in PA (see Gov. Corbett’s PR Campaign for $1.7B Cracker Plant Tax Break). So far, frankly, that hasn’t happened. At least not in a big way. But don’t worry, says Shell execs. They are “optimistic” the region will attract new manufacturing plants that want to use Shell’s plastic pellets.
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Shell Officially Launches Pa. Cracker Plant Using M-U Ethane

polyethylene pellets

It’s been a looooong time coming. We’ve waited for this day for more than ten years. In March 2012, MDN told you that Shell had announced selecting a site in Pennsylvania as the future location for an ethane cracker plant (see Shell Announces Location of Ethane Cracker Plant). Ethane crackers use ethane (doh!) as their feedstock to “crack” the ethane and create plastic pellets that are then used by manufacturers to make pretty much everything you touch and use every day. Ethane is one of the NGLs (natural gas liquids) that comes out of the ground along with natural gas (methane) and other NGLs like propane and butane. We have huge amounts of ethane in the Marcellus/Utica. New markets, like the Shell cracker, equal bigger profits for M-U drillers.
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PA DEP Pledges to Keep a Close Eye on Shell Cracker Air Quality

Anti-fossil fuelers continue to pressure the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (and Pennsylvania itself) over the grievous sin of approving the Shell ethane cracker plant project (see Shell Receives Air Quality Permit from PA DEP for Cracker Plant). With the cracker plant now in startup mode, antis want to know, “Who monitors Shell’s cracker plant — and how?” The partisan leftists of so-called PublicSource hit the DEP with that very question. The DEP said that while Shell itself must conduct constant (daily) monitoring of air quality using independent, third-party equipment (sending the data to the DEP), the DEP will also conduct its own regular on-site inspections and testing as well.
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11 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Oct 17-23

Another weak and pathetic number of new shale drilling permits were issued for the week of Oct. 17-23 in the Marcellus/Utica. Pennsylvania had only 10 new permits, with six of them going to Range Resources in Beaver County. Ohio had just one new permit, for Southwestern Energy in Monroe County. And West Virginia had a big, fat, goose egg. No new permits. Bummer.
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PA DEP Slaps Shell with $700K Fine re Building Falcon Ethane Pipe

The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has assessed a $670,000 fine plus extra “cost recovery” charges of nearly $30,000 against the Shell Pipeline Company for work done between 2019 and 2021 on Shell’s Falcon ethane pipeline project. The DEP says that a series of inspections showed “failure to comply” with this paperwork requirement and that paperwork requirement. There were a few instances of erosion into “waters of the commonwealth.” But in the end, the DEP acknowledges, “no visual aquatic impacts were observed.” No muddy water. No dead fishies. No dead salamanders. No dead nothing. In other words, the DEP fined Shell for nothing–no lasting impacts on the environment from the work done to construct the Falcon pipeline.
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30 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Sep 19-25

Last week the three states with active Marcellus/Utica drilling, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, issued a collective 30 new drilling permits, up from the 21 permits issued the week before. It was a reversal of what we typically see. Last week PA only issued four new permits, while WV issued 17 permits and OH issued nine permits. Usually, PA issues the most permits.
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Shell Cracker Compressor Problem Causes Shut Down, Billowing Smoke

Credit: Becky Beall

The mighty Shell ethane cracker in Beaver County, PA, is now complete and gradually coming up to full operation–although it isn’t officially producing plastic pellets yet. The Shell cracker plant experienced a problem with a process compressor last Sunday that forced a shutdown and billowing smoke for about 20 minutes. In a statement posted to (of all places) Facebook, Shell said, “Operations are stable and we’re working to determine the cause of the interruption.”
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Shell PA Cracker Neighbors Ask About Orange Glow and White Foam

The mighty Shell ethane cracker complex in Monaca (Beaver County), PA, is due to come online any day now. In fact, with such a large and complex facility, it is already “coming online” gradually and has been since August (see Shell CEO Says PA Cracker Now Done, Gradually Coming Online). The truly momentous event will be when the first plastic pellets come out of the plant. Shell held a virtual meeting Wednesday evening to field questions from the community as the day draws near when the plant is fully operational. One of the questions came from neighbors observing an orange glow hovering over the plant. Another question was about “white foam” floating near the facility on the Ohio River.
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19 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Aug 22-28

Last week the three states with active Marcellus/Utica drilling, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, issued a collective 19 new drilling permits, down from 30 the week before. The top receiver of permits in PA was EQT (i.e. Rice Drilling), with five permits issued for the same well pad in Greene County. Range Resources and Inflection Energy each received two new permits.
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Shell CEO Says PA Cracker Now Done, Gradually Coming Online

In June, a Shell executive told the Appalachian Energy Innovation Collaborative conference that the company’s Pennsylvania ethane cracker project was 98% done and would be fully online within “a couple of months” (see Shell Exec Says Ethane Cracker 98% Done, Online “Couple of Months”). He was right. During a recent conference call with analysts about second quarter performance, Shell CEO Ben van Beurden said, “we’re done building it” (referring to the ethane cracker), and that “we will indeed start bringing production on gradually” over the summer. Hot dang! We’re deep into summer right now.
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PennEnergy Creek Water Request Now “Complete” – PA DEP Reviewing

PennEnergy Resources recently reapplied (for a second time) for a permit to draw water from Big Sewickley Creek–but this time the request is cut in half, to just 1.5 million gallons of water a day (see PennEnergy Reapplies to Use SWPA Creek Water for Fracking Ops). In March PennEnergy submitted its water management plan amendment application for proposed water withdrawals from Big Sewickley Creek in Economy Borough, located in Beaver County. As before, the request is to use the water for shale well fracking. This second application proposes a lower allocation request of 1.5 million gallons per day. After an initial delay, the DEP is now actively reviewing PennEnergy’s application.
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Shell Exec Says Ethane Cracker 98% Done, Online “Couple of Months”

polyethylene pellets

It’s been a loooong time coming. MDN has covered the Shell ethane cracker plant complex from the very beginning, back in 2016 (see Breaking: Shell Pulls the Trigger, PA Ethane Cracker is a Go!). We’re now six years later, over 8,000 jobs created and billions of dollars spent, and within the next few months Shell will begin full operations at its ethane cracker in Monaca (Beaver County), PA. A Shell executive told the Appalachian Energy Innovation Collaborative’s conference yesterday that the project is now 98% done and will be fully online within “a couple of months.” That is sweet news!
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Decision Nears, Antis Still Oppose PennEnergy Creek Water Request

PennEnergy Resources recently reapplied (for a second time) for a permit to draw water from Big Sewickley Creek–but this time the request is cut in half, to just 1.5 million gallons of water a day (see PennEnergy Reapplies to Use SWPA Creek Water for Fracking Ops). In March PennEnergy submitted its water management plan amendment application for proposed water withdrawals from Big Sewickley Creek in Economy Borough, located in Beaver County. As before, the request is to use the water for shale well fracking (the company just received permits to drill seven new wells in Beaver County, PA, see today’s permit report). This application proposes a lower allocation request of 1.5 million gallons per day. As a decision by the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) nears, antis and local Democrat politicians still oppose the modified request. No surprise there.
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Antis Go Plastics Hunting Near Shell Cracker Outfitted in…Plastics

Captain Evan Clark, the Three Rivers Waterkeeper, takes a “nurdle patrol” crew out on the Ohio River, near Shell’s new ethane cracker plant. Photo: Julie Grant / The Allegheny Front

You really can’t make this stuff up. Anti-fossil fuelers aligned with Three Rivers Waterkeeper recently went on a boat trip on the Ohio River in Beaver County, PA, near where Shell is almost finished constructing a huge ethane cracker plant, to look for plastic “nurdles.” The small plastic pellets or beads are what the Shell cracker will make when it’s up and running. The antis want to establish a baseline for how many nurdles are found in the water now, before operations begin at the cracker plant, so they can visit later and test again to see if anything has spilled into the local waterway. We think it’s fair to say the antis are also anti-plastics, given their comments. So the pictures of the plastics hunters accompanying the article are quite hilarious. All of the plastics hunters are kitted out in jackets, hats, glasses, hip boots, etc. that are made from the very plastics they are hunting.
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Shell Cracker has Not Led to New Petchem Cos. Nearby – So Far

One of the big promises of building a multi-billion dollar ethane cracker plant project is its ability to act like a magnet attracting other petrochemical and manufacturing plants to locate near it, using the outputs of the ethane cracker as their inputs. According to an article appearing in the Pittsburgh Business Times, the great promise of attracting more businesses to the southwestern PA region with the construction of the Shell cracker plant has not, so far at least, resulted in a big influx of new businesses.
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Shell PA Cracker Welders Sue for Bus-Ride Overtime, Class Action

As the mighty Shell ethane cracker plant complex nears 100% completion and startup, which will happen this year, there is a lingering legal issue for some of the workers who helped build the plant. Back in 2017, we alerted you that one of the biggest challenges in constructing the facility was something rather mundane, but key: finding enough parking for the thousands of workers needed to do the construction of the plant (see Shell Cracker Makes Progress; Biggest Problem So Far? Parking). Shell purchased and leased nearby land, mall parking lots, and even built a new road to get workers in and out of the site. But it still was not an easy nor quick process going to and from the site.
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