Beaver County | Energy Companies | Ethane | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Processing Plants | Shell
Shell CEO Says PA Cracker Not Fully Online Until 2025/26, Cost $14B
Yesterday, Shell’s new CEO, Wael Sawan, spilled some major beans about the company’s ethane cracker in Monaca (Beaver County), Pennsylvania. Sawan’s comments about the cracker came during a quarterly conference call with analysts to discuss the company’s performance during the fourth quarter of 2023. Until yesterday, Shell had steadfastly declined to disclose how much money it spent to build the Monaca ethane cracker facility. Sawan said yesterday the number was a massive $14 billion, far more than the estimated $6-$10 billion that had been bandied about for years.
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Hopefully, we’re near the end of an effort to overturn a bill passed in early 2022 by the West Virginia legislature, Senate Bill (SB) 694, which finally brought forced pooling for shale wells to the Mountain State after eight years of trying (see 
Well, this was predictable. In fact, we predicted it! We’re talking about today’s announcement that radicalized left Democrat members of the New York legislature, including Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo (from Endicott) and Senator Lea Webb (from Binghamton), are introducing a bill to ban so-called CO2 fracking in the state. A group of leftist Democrats were joined this morning by movie star Mark Ruffalo (a really dumb person) to announce the bill to ban all forms of fracking in the Empire State.
On Monday, we told you the mayor of Chester, PA (a suburb of Philadelphia), Stefan Roots, boldly proclaimed that an LNG export project planned for his community called Penn LNG is “dead in the water” (see 
We’ve talked plenty in recent months about the problems in the Red Sea with Iran’s puppets, the Houthis, trying to hijack ships, and (lately) lobbing bombs at ships sailing through the region. Those ships include LNG (liquefied natural gas) and LPG (liquefied petroleum gas, or propane) carriers. The result is predictable: Ships have stopped using the Red Sea and the Suez Canal that connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Senators: Biden’s LNG pause hurting W.Va.; NATIONAL: Senate confirms nominee to lead EPA’s climate & clean air office; Documentary duo strike gold with DC climate trial ‘verbatim podcast’; INTERNATIONAL: Enbridge Gas open season for peak storage bids at Dawn Hub; Oil drops on conflicting reports of war ceasefire; WoodMac, Standard Chartered look at Biden LNG export pause.
Equitrans, the builder of the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline project, is more than just a one-trick (one pipeline) pony. Equitrans owns 940 miles of FERC-regulated, interstate pipelines that have interconnect points to seven interstate pipelines and multiple local distribution companies (LDCs). The transmission and storage system is supported by 43 compressor units, with total throughput capacity of approximately 4.4 Bcf per day and compression of approximately 136,000 horsepower, and 18 natural gas storage reservoirs, which have a peak withdrawal capacity of approximately 820 million cubic feet (MMcf) per day and a working gas capacity of approximately 43 Bcf. Two of Equitrans’ 18 storage reservoirs — Hunters Cave and Swarts, both in Greene County, PA — are getting a makeover.
Actions speak so much louder than words on a page, don’t they? Take Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. When he was Attorney General, he relentlessly threatened and attacked and harassed the companies in the Marcellus industry (
Last Friday, Joementia announced a one-year “pause” on any approvals for new LNG export plants (currently 17 requests in the pipeline) for at least one year while his people pretend to figure out how to measure global warming as a new consideration for whether or not to approve a project (see 
