In our oceans, yes, and in our rivers, yards and our own bodies

From an Article by Tik Root, Washington Post, March 2, 2022

For the first time, the international community has agreed on a framework to curb the world’s growing plastic problem. A resolution adopted March 2nd by the United Nations lays out an ambitious plan for developing a legally binding treaty by the end of 2024 to “end plastic pollution.”

“With plastic pollution getting worse every day, there is no time to waste,” said Rwandan Environment Minister Jeanne d’Arc Mujawamariya. “This decision is a historic milestone in the global effort to prevent our planet from drowning in plastics.”

The resolution came on the third day of the biennial U.N. Environment Assembly in Nairobi, where more than 150 countries are represented. It calls for the creation of an intergovernmental negotiating committee to hash out details of a treaty by the end of 2024.

“This is just an amazing show of what the world can do when we work together,” said U.S. delegate Monica Medina, the assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs. Choking back tears, she added, “It is the beginning of the end of the scourge of plastic on this planet. … I think we will look back on this as a day for our children and grandchildren.”

U.S. is top contributor to plastic waste, report shows

The committee’s mandate includes all phases of the plastic life cycle — from design and production to waste management. It comes at a time when the world produces billions of pounds of plastic waste annually — about 353 million tons in 2019, according to a recent report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and amid mounting scientific concerns about issues such as marine plastic debris and the potential impact of microplastics.

Millions of tons of plastic end up in the oceans each year, leading to alarming images of turtles and other wildlife caught in the waste. Even Mount Everest has not escaped microplastics pollution. The United States contributes most to this deluge, according to a National Academy of Sciences study, generating about 287 pounds of plastics per person.

“The high and rapidly increasing levels of plastic pollution represent a serious environmental problem at a global scale,” noted the U.N. resolution, which also acknowledged “the urgent need to strengthen global coordination, cooperation and governance to take immediate actions toward the long-term elimination of plastic pollution.”

Some countries, states and municipalities have taken action to curb plastic waste. Rwanda, for instance, has had a ban on plastic bags for more than a decade. In the United States, Sens. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) have led congressional efforts on plastic pollution, including the Save Our Seas 2.0 Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law in 2020. But this latest move is the most concerted international effort yet to tackle the problem of plastic pollution.

Environmental activists and industry representatives alike welcomed the agreement. “It has all the critical components we thought were necessary at this stage in the process,” said Erin Simon, the head of plastic waste and business at the World Wildlife Fund. In a statement, the International Council of Chemical Associations, a trade association, wrote, “We commend the governments that spent long days finding common ground to develop a meaningful resolution to address plastic pollution.”

The U.N. resolution was years in the making, said David Azoulay, a lawyer at the Center for International Environmental Law. He says he remembers the idea first surfacing at the 2016 iteration of the U.N. Environment Assembly in the context of marine plastic. “Envisioning a treaty was unthinkable,” Azoulay said. But, he added, Wednesday’s resolution has gone even beyond that early focus.

“The issue is not just plastic in the ocean; the issue is plastic pollution throughout its life cycle,” Azoulay said. “There is very little in there that I wish wasn’t in there. Everything we need to have the conversations that will lead to a good treaty is in there.”

Azoulay was glad that among the achievements in the resolution, its final version specifically charged the negotiating committee with looking at plastic production, included the option for a dedicated fund to help finance the treaty and mentioned human health impacts of plastic pollution.

The world created about 8 million tons of pandemic plastic waste, and much of it is now in the ocean

“There were efforts to weaken the language on health that failed,” said Bjorn Beeler, the international coordinator at the International Pollutants Elimination Network, an advocacy and research group. Although he said he would have liked a more explicit mention of the chemical additives in plastics, that language was “negotiated out.” An aspect about which Simon is excited is the call for national action plans from each participating country. More harmonized and standard data is “critical,” she said but acknowledged that “the proof is in the action we take from here on out.”

Getting from resolution to treaty will not be easy. “The fact that they are headed toward binding rules I take as a very good sign,” said Steven Blackledge, who runs the conservation program at the nonprofit group Environment America. “The devil is in the details.”

The U.N. negotiating committee will have a multitude of specifics to wade through in a relatively short time. Among the many items, any treaty will have to tackle reporting standards, financing mechanisms and, perhaps the thorniest issue, plastic production. “The million-dollar question is how much we’ll talk about reducing the production of virgin plastic,” Azoulay said.

That topic is likely to prove contentious. Ahead of the conference, Joshua Baca, the vice president for plastics at the American Chemistry Council, the trade association for chemicals manufacturers, called restricting and regulating the production of plastic “a very shortsighted approach.”

With such major hurdles left to clear, Beeler said he is skeptical that the timeline will hold. “As you get into it, it’s going to be a monster. I don’t fathom how you can get a deal within two years,” he said. “This is meaningful; this is significant. But this is really the first step.”

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SEE ALSO: Spotlight on United Nations Environment Assembly With Legally Binding Pact to Address Plastic Pollution | The Weather Channel, March 2, 2022

On the third and final day at the resumed fifth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly taking place at the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) headquarters in Kenya, all eyes are on the establishment of an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to work towards a global and legally binding agreement to address plastic pollution.

See the westernvaluesproject.org

From the FracTracker Alliance, March 30, 2020

The COVID-19 health crisis is setting off major changes in the oil and gas industry. The situation may thwart plans for additional petrochemical expansion and cause investors to turn away from fracking for good.

Persistent Negative Returns

Oil, gas, and petrochemical producers were facing financial uncertainties even before COVID-19 began to spread internationally. Now, the economics have never been worse.

In 2019, shale-focused oil and gas producers ended the year with net losses of $6.7 billion. This capped off the decade of the “shale revolution,” during which oil and gas companies spent $189 billion more on drilling and other capital expenses than they brought in through sales. This negative cash flow is a huge red flag for investors.

“North America’s shale industry has never succeeded in producing positive free cash flows for any full year since the practice of fracking became widespread.” IEEFA

Plummeting Prices of oil AND natural gas are BOTH problematic

Shale companies in the United States produce more natural gas than they can sell, to the extent that they frequently resort to burning gas straight into the atmosphere. This oversupply drives down prices, a phenomenon that industry refers to as a “price glut.”

The oil-price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia has been taking a toll on oil and gas prices as well. Saudi Arabia plans to increase oil production by 2 – 3 million barrels per day in April, bringing the global total to 102 million barrels produced per day. But with the global COVID-19 lockdown, transportation has decreased considerably, and the world may only need 90 million barrels per day.

If you’ve taken Econ 101, you know that when production increases as demand decreases, prices plummet. Some analysts estimate that the price of oil will soon fall to as low as $5 per barrel, (compared to the OPEC+ intended price of $60 per barrel).

Corporate welfare vs. public health and safety

Oil and gas industry lobbyists have asked Congress for financial support in response to COVID-19. Two stimulus bills in both the House and Senate are currently competing for aid.

Speaker McConnell’s bill seeks to provide corporate welfare with a $415 billion fund. This would largely benefit industries like oil and gas, airlines, and cruise ships. Friends of the Earth gauged the potential bailout to the fracking industry at $26.287 billion. In another approach, the GOP Senate is seeking to raise oil prices by directly purchasing for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the nation’s emergency oil supply.

Speaker Pelosi’s proposed stimulus bill includes $250 billion in emergency funding with stricter conditions on corporate use, but doesn’t contain strong enough language to prevent a massive bailout to oil and gas companies.

Hopefully with public pressure, Democrats will take a firmer stance and push for economic stimulus to be directed to healthcare, paid sick leave, stronger unemployment insurance, free COVID-19 testing, and food security.

The industry is now grasping at straws

Fracking companies were struggling to stay afloat before COVID-19 even with generous government subsidies. It’s becoming very clear that the fracking boom is finally busting. In an attempt to make use of the oversupply of gas and win back investors, the petrochemical industry is expanding rapidly. There are currently plans for $164 billion of new infrastructure in the United States that would turn fracked natural gas into plastic.

There are several fundamental flaws with this plan.

One is that the price of plastic is falling. A new report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) states that the price of plastic today is 40% lower than industry projections in 2010-2013. This is around the time that plans started for a $5.7 billion petrochemical complex in Belmont County, Ohio. This would be the second major infrastructural addition to the planned petrochemical buildout in the Ohio River Valley, the first being the multi-billion dollar ethane cracker plant in Beaver County, Pennsylvania.

Secondly, there is more national and global competition than anticipated, both in supply and production. Natural gas and petrochemical companies have invested in infrastructure in an attempt to take advantage of cheap natural gas, creating an oversupply of plastic, again decreasing prices and revenue. Plus, governments around the world are banning single-use plastics, and McKinsey & Company estimates that up to 60% of plastic production could be based on reuse and recycling by 2050.

Sharp declines in feedstock prices do not lead to rising demand for petrochemical end products.

Third, oil and gas companies were overly optimistic in their projections of national economic growth. The IMF recently projected that GDP growth will slow down in China and the United States in the coming years. And this was before the historic drop in oil prices and the COVID-19 outbreak.

“The risks are becoming insurmountable. The price of plastics is sinking and the market is already oversupplied due to industry overbuilding and increased competition,” said Tom Sanzillo, IEEFA’s director of finance and author of the report.

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See also: Proposed PTTGC Petrochemical Complex in Ohio Faces Significant Risks, Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, March 2020

“Financial outlook dims as financial and policy pressures mount”

The PTTGC Petrochemical Complex planned for Belmont County, Ohio by Thailand-based PTT Global Chemical (“PTTGC”) and Daimler of South Korea promises jobs, taxes and spinoff benefits to the State of Ohio and the people of southeastern Ohio. The project is also a critical element of a larger plan to establish a second U.S. petrochemical hub in the Ohio River Valley, akin to the Gulf Coast. This report highlights risks to the PTTGC project. The risks, left unheeded, strongly suggest that the plant will face financial distress when it opens and into the foreseeable future, reducing potential economic benefits.

Chemical industry impacts to residential areas?

Date: January 26th 2020, Time: 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM

Place: Eddy Theatre, Chatham University, 1 Woodland Road,
Pittsburgh, PA 15232

The 14th Ward Independent Democratic Club is pleased to announce that the Club’s Annual Meeting will host a panel discussion on Sunday, January 26th titled “The Petrochemical Build-Out: Not What It’s Cracked Up To Be?” The speakers will be Dr. Erin N. Mayfield and Dr. Patricia M. DeMarco, who have both received distinguished awards for their research.

On December 8, 2019, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette featured as its front-page story the article: “Study: Shale gas job gains don’t offset the damage done: CMU Study finds build-out causes early deaths, affects environment.“ The 14th Ward Independent Democratic Club has invited the authors of the Carnegie Mellon University report to share their findings with the community.

Recent analysis has indicated that the proposed building of additional cracker plants in Western Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia may have serious environmental and economic consequences. With regard to the City of Pittsburgh alone, Mayor Bill Peduto in a Public Source interview said “there was no meeting that occurred that shifted our economic future away from the growing eds and meds to cracker plants . . . but that’s what happened.”

Erin N. Mayfield, Ph.D. is the lead author of the CMU Report. Dr. Mayfield completed her doctorate at CMU and is now with the Princeton Environmental Institute – Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment.

Patricia M. DeMarco, Ph.D. is Resident Scholar at Chatham University, and is the author of the recently published Pathways to Our Sustainable Future: A Global Perspective from Pittsburgh. She will be available to sign copies after the Danko Forum.

The Barbara Daly Danko Political Forum is named after the late Allegheny County Council Member Barbara Daly Danko. Ms. Danko, a longtime member of the 14th Ward Democratic Committee and 14th Ward Independent Democratic Club, served as the Chair of the 14th Ward Democratic Committee from 2006 until 2012, and served on Allegheny County Council representing the 11th District.

The Danko Political Forum provides a venue for candidate debates and discussion of important public policy issues affecting the 14th Ward and the City of Pittsburgh.

This year’s Danko Forum is intended to draw more attention to the trade-offs between the impacts, costs, and stated benefits of fossil fuel development and the expansion of the petrochemical industry in the region.

Attendees are encouraged to bring their questions to help clarify the actual community consensus on these trade-offs and, if there is significant divergence from this consensus and current developments, discuss a political response.

The 2020 Danko Forum is co-sponsored by the 14th Ward Independent Democratic Club, the Chatham University College Democrats and the 14th Ward Democratic Committee.

The event is free and open to the public. Free parking is available in the lots off Murray Hill Avenue.

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See also: Is shale development worth the costs? A CMU study says no. | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 8, 2019

Areas of Interest for Ethane Storage

Article by Jim Kotcon, Conservation Chair, Sierra Club, Morgantown, WV

From: Mountain State Sierran, Volume 45, Number 2, Summer 2019

The Appalachian Storage Hub (ASH), sometimes called the Appalachian Storage and Trading Hub, is a proposal for underground storage of various natural gas byproducts that could support a plastics industry.

Natural gas is mostly methane, but in some formations, significant amounts of other gases and liquids (including propane, butane, and especially ethane) occur with the methane. These are usually separated from methane because they burn hotter or have more value for manufacturing purposes.

Without a market, these may be “flared” (burned off to eliminate them). But converting ethane to ethylene and polyethylene makes the ethane valuable for plastics. The process requires multi-billion-dollar “cracker” plants, several of which are proposed for West Virginia and adjoining states to take advantage of the ready supply from the fracking boom and the large volumes of these liquids.

But a cracker plant wants a steady supply of ethane, and the ASH is needed to store the large volumes needed. Neither the ASH nor the crackers are economically viable without the other. Proponents argue that the ASH is the key to $100 billion in investments and tens of thousands of jobs.

So, Where’s the Elephant?

In 2015, almost all nations signed the Paris Climate Agreement, committing these nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to keep global warming below 2o C, and striving for 1.5o C. The IPCC and most other scientific organizations agree that this means we must drastically reduce use of fossil fuels. The world must reduce emissions from fossil fuels by 50 percent within 10 years and be almost entirely off fossil fuels within 30 years.

Construction of a large gas industry is fundamentally incompatible with that goal. Yet none of the proponents will discuss this issue, or even admit that it is real. None of the major investors in the ASH or cracker plants or related industries are including greenhouse gas mitigation in their business plans.

The West Virginia Department of Commerce and the U.S. Department of Energy are offering major incentives and subsidies to develop the ASH. Political leaders including WV’s U.S. Senators and all three Representatives, the Governor, and the overwhelming majority of state legislators and county commissioners and all state and local economic development agencies are advocates for these increased federal subsidies.

But no one will talk about the greenhouse gas issue, or even plan for it.

Why is This Relevant to the ASH?

Ethane crackers create more demand for fracking and natural gas wells, pipelines and related facilities. These all emit methane, and some emit a lot. Methane is 84 times more effective at capturing heat than carbon dioxide (over a 20-year life span).

Ethane crackers also use tremendous amounts of electricity, most of which is expected to come from fossil fuels. It is expected that the plastics industry will account for one-sixth of all greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Most importantly, investments in fossil fuel infrastructure slow the transition to sustainable, renewable energy sources.

What You Can Do

Call or e-mail our Congressional delegation and ask them to oppose federal subsidies for the ASH. Send a copy of your comments to U.S. Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, and Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

Source: https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/www.sierraclub.org/files/sce-authors/u4882/2019%202%20Summer%20Sierran.pdf

Jim Ratcliffe, CEO of INEOS, now a billionaire

Corporate News Statement from Richard Longden (INEOS), July 3, 2018

INEOS commits to building a new world scale chemical cracker and PDH plant in North West Europe. The €2.7 billion is the biggest capital investment ever made by INEOS.

This is the first cracker to be built in Europe in over 20 years. Jim Ratcliffe, Founder and Chairman of INEOS says, “This is the largest investment to be made in the European chemical sector for a generation. It will be a game changer for the industry and shows our commitment to manufacturing.”

Today INEOS has approved a €2.7 billion capital project to build both a world scale ethane cracker and a PDH (Propane Dehydrogenation) unit in Northern Europe. Both units will benefit from US shale gas economics.

This will be the first new cracker built in Europe for two decades. It will also be one of the most efficient and environmentally friendly plants of its type in the world.

The location of the site will be determined soon and it is likely to be on the coast of North West Europe. A project team has been assigned to consider options and the project is expected to be completed within four years.

Gerd Franken, Chairman INEOS Olefins and Polymers North says, “This new project will increase INEOS self-sufficiency in all key olefin products and give further support to our derivatives business and polymer plants in Europe. All our assets will benefit from our ability to import competitive raw materials from the USA and the rest of the world”

This new investment follows a decision taken by INEOS last year to increase the capacity of its existing crackers.

Jim Ratcliffe adds, “INEOS is going from strength to strength. This new investment builds on the huge investment we made in bringing US shale gas to Europe and will ensure the long-term future of our European chemical plants.”

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NOTE: The name INEOS is derived from INspec Ethylene Oxide Specialities, a previous name of the business. It also stems from one Latin and two Greek words that founder Jim Ratcliffe and his two sons found when searching for a company name. “Ineo” is Latin for a new beginning, “Eos” is the Greek goddess of dawn and “neos” means something new and innovative. As a result, the name Ineos represents the “dawn of something new and innovative”. Jim Ratcliffe, 65, chief executive of Ineos, in May 2018 topped the Sunday Times Rich List with a fortune of £21.05 billion, making him the UK’s wealthiest person.

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See also: Following Spills and Sinkholes, Mariner East Pipeline Opponents Call on PA Governor Wolf to Stop Construction, Sharon Kelly, DeSmog Blog, June 11, 2018

Thai-Japanese duo angling for another Marcellus ethane cracker

From an Article by Anya Litvak, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, September 28, 2014

A partnership between Thailand’s largest chemical company and a Japanese trading and investment house is shopping the region for an ethane cracker site.

Allenport’s Mon River Industrial Park in Washington County is one of three locations being evaluated by the partners Bangkok-based PTT Global Chemical and Tokyo-based Marubeni Corp.

This is the third potential cracker project seriously considering the Appalachian region to capitalize on the supply of natural gas liquids, specifically ethane, that are abundant in parts of the Marcellus and Utica shale formations.

Royal Dutch Shell was the first company to announce it is evaluating the Horsehead Corp. complex in Potter Township, Beaver County, for a world-scale ethane cracker. The multibillion-dollar plant would convert ethane into ethylene, a feedstock for the petrochemical industry.

And last year, Brazilian company Odebrecht said it had chosen Parkersburg, W.Va., to study as a site for its proposed Appalachian cracker facility, dubbed Project Ascent. Both companies are still evaluating and haven’t yet made their final decisions to build.

Shell’s spokeswoman Kim Wyndon said it’s too early in everyone’s evaluation process to speculate what impact three crackers would have on the region, if all are indeed built. She could only speak for Shell’s motivation for choosing an Appalachian site. “The supply was there and we knew we would have the workforce capabilities that were needed,” she said.

Odebrecht’s David Peebles, who is vice president of Ascent, said the addition of a third cracker project would start to create a concentration of ethane plants in the region and help drive a manufacturing renaissance here.  “This is like the Silicon Valley for the polymer industry,” he said.

Sources familiar with the PTT-Marubeni effort, who requested to remain anonymous, confirmed the group has been looking at the Tri-State area for the better part of a year. The evaluation process has clued in state and local economic development officials, as well as the environmental regulators and transportation interests, they said.

Aside from Allenport, a site in West Virginia and another in Ohio are on the table for the PTT-Marubeni project, sources said. The three states have competed fiercely for the other two major cracker projects.

The 400-acre Allenport location is the former home of Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel. It has 16 buildings once used in manufacturing and for warehousing, and barge and rail access. In 2012, the industrial park was designated a Keystone Opportunity Expansion Zone, a state classification that grants companies that locate there tax exemptions and abatement for 10 years.

PTT Global Chemical’s outgoing president and CEO Bowon Vongsinudom told Chemical Week magazine in July that his company was in discussions about a U.S. cracker and resins project that would use Marcellus Shale gas as a feedstock.

With revenue of $17.7 billion during the past fiscal year, PTT is on a growth path. While only about 2 percent of its sales came from the U.S. last year, Mr. Vongsinudom told the trade publication that the firm wants to have a strong manufacturing base outside of Thailand and is looking at the United States as a target for expansion.

For its part, Marubeni already is active in North America and has a stake in several U.S. shale plays through joint venture partnerships in the Niobrara and the Eagle Ford shales. Energy is a growing part of the Japanese company’s revenue stream. In 2013, energy accounted for 27 percent of Marubeni’s revenue, a close second to the company’s largest money maker, agriculture.

PTT and Marubeni already are working together in Asia. The duo signed an agreement last year to jointly develop new power plant projects in Thailand and neighboring countries.

Feasibility studies continue for WV ethane cracker plant

SABIC plastics plant closing in 2015

Update from Huntington Herald-Dispatch, March 18, 2014

PARKERSBURG — The proposed ethane cracker project for Wood County is continuing to move forward as work has started to see what will be needed to make the project a reality. In November, officials announced the Brazil-based Odebrecht is planning for the development of an ethane cracker, three polyethylene plants and associated infrastructure for water treatment and energy co-generation.

A cracker plant converts ethane, a byproduct from Marcellus Shale and Utica Shale natural gas, into the widely used ethylene, a key component for the plastics industry. The proposed complex is called ASCENT, which stands for Appalachian Shale Cracker Enterprise. If the plant is built, it would be operated by Braskem America.

Odebrecht/Braskem spokesman Chuck Glazer said officials are still in the beginning stages of the feasibility study to evaluate if the factors are in place to see if the project is able to move ahead in Wood County. Some of those factors include the availability of raw material supplies, the local labor force, available help from the local community as well as the state government.

“We are still very early in the process,” Glazer said.

Appalachian Shale Cracker Enterprise LLC purchased the SABIC Innovative Plastics plant property at 9226 DuPont Road, Washington, W.Va., for $10,910,890. The sale was completed on December 31st. SABIC, which employs about 130 people, is set to close in 2015.

Officials have indicated that an archeological dig is being planned for the Tri-C ballfields near SABIC. The ballfields are being planned to be relocated to make room for Project ASCENT.  Company officials are not releasing some aspects of the project, in part, to manage expectations from the public. They have said when there is something to announce, they will be more than eager to do so.

State officials have said that the immediate challenge is overcoming infrastructure issues and how the state can assist the company. Officials talked about the need for pipelines to move the natural gas and its related products. Discussions have also taken place about educational needs throughout the region to have a qualified workforce in place if the project moves forward.

Houston Residents Get Asthma

Houston is preview to Shell’s proposed Beaver County cracker plant?

Allegheny Front, October 25, 2013

HOUSTON ­­– The largest chemical hub in the Americas courses through this city in a seemingly unending line of plants that produce about a quarter of the country’s petrochemicals. These plants have helped fuel the city’s economic rise. But they also have added to its poor air quality, with emissions that have been linked to asthma, cancer, and heart attacks.

In recent years, Houston has found ways to reduce air pollution, in part by zeroing in on chemical plant emissions. Experts say Houston’s experience may show others how to keep chemical emissions down, even as the industry expands along the Gulf Coast, and possibly into Pennsylvania.

From Pennsylvania to Texas, the chemical industry is building new plants to take advantage of vast deposits of natural gas opened up by the fracking boom. Shell Chemical is eyeing building an ethane cracker in Monaca in Beaver County. The plant would take ethane from the Marcellus shale and convert it into ethylene—a key building block for plastics and chemicals—through the ‘cracking’ process.

Shell’s Pennsylvania cracker would be northwest of Pittsburgh, in a region that already fails federal air quality standards for ozone and other pollutants, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Ozone is an oxidant that can burn lung tissue, aggravate asthma and increase susceptibility to respiratory illnesses like pneumonia and bronchitis, according to the agency.

Ozone is formed when volatile organic compounds (VOCs) mix with other forms of pollution in the presence of sunlight. Air quality experts say the biggest impact a cracker plant would have in Pittsburgh would be through releases of VOCs.

The company has said differences in local permitting rules and the type of raw materials it would use make it hard to project what kinds of emissions a Pennsylvania cracker would produce. The company has used Shell’s Norco plant in Louisiana in the past as a reference when it proposed its Pennsylvania cracker. Norco produces roughly twice the VOCs of U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke works, currently the highest emitter in Southwestern Pennsylvania, according to the EPA.

Shell recently agreed to spend $115 million to clean up emissions at its Deer Park, Texas, refinery and ethylene plant near Houston after the Department of Justice filed a complaint alleging the plant’s flares were emitting improper amounts of VOCs and cancer­-causing pollutants.

Joe Osborne of the Group Against Smog and Pollution, an environmental advocacy group in Pittsburgh, said the Beaver County plant would likely be a major source of new pollution, with more than 50 tons per year of VOCs and 100 tons of nitrogen oxides, another key component of ozone, though he has yet to see any estimates from the company.

“I expect it will be a large source of ozone precursors, and this would be located in an area that’s already failing to meet federal health-­based standards for ozone,” he said.

Looking to Houston

One study linked high ozone incidents to increased instances of cardiac arrest in Houston; others have found high rates of asthma and childhood leukemia in neighborhoods near the chemical industry.

Adding difficulty to the issue is the fact that Houston has no zoning laws, which means some residents live across the street from huge refineries and chemical plants. But in the last decade, Houston’s air has improved, in part because regulators have targeted the petrochemical industry.

The city’s air quality nadir was in 1999. “We were the capital of ozone,” says Elizabeth Hendler, a former state regulator who now works as an environmental consultant to industry. In that year, Houston surpassed Los Angeles as having the highest ozone levels in America. “That was kind of a wake­up call,” Hendler said.

Not long afterward, in 2003, Toyota decided against locating a plant in the region because of the city’s air. Hendler says the number of air monitors in Houston doubled in a few years.

The state undertook a wide-­ranging series of studies. Aircraft from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration flew over the ship channel with special emissions-­sensing equipment.

They found big leaks at the plants. The worst were from chemical plants with ‘crackers’ that made ethylene and propylene, two basic building blocks of plastic.

“The plants were having 1,000 pound releases, 5,000 pound releases, 20,000 pound releases, in one case 200,000 pound releases,” said Harvey Jeffries, a retired University of North Carolina chemist who studied Houston’s air and advised business and research groups on Houston’s air problems.

Ethylene and propylene—the two main products made in a cracker— ­are considered ‘highly reactive’ VOCs, meaning they can create large plumes of ozone in a matter of hours under the right conditions.

“When that stuff gets emitted in the daytime—it cooks up the highest amount of ozone you’ve ever seen,” Jeffries said.

When they looked at Houston’s industrial corridor, scientists realized chemical plants had been chronically under­-reporting their emissions. A lot of this pollution was ‘fugitive’ emissions—leaks from valves, flanges, tiny holes in pipes, and incomplete combustion of waste gasses in the plants’ flares.

To get the city’s air under federal air pollution limits, Texas implemented a suite of environmental reforms. The state created special limits on emissions of highly reactive VOCs like propylene and ethylene, and implemented a cap­-and-­trade program for Houston’s petrochemical plants.

What happened next?  “Well, ozone went down—­­a lot,” Hendler said. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality estimates the city’s ozone levels have decreased about 20 percent since 2001.

The number of days when the air in Houston exceeds the EPA’s current eight­-hour average for ozone of 75 parts per billion went from around 100 a year in 2005 to under 35 days in 2012. Emissions of other pollutants, including carcinogenic chemicals released in petrochemical manufacturing, also decreased.

Progress, but no cure

In spite of recent strides, Houston still struggles with air quality. The city will see huge expansions of its petrochemical sector in the next few years, thanks to the fracking boom. Several new or expanded ethane crackers are slated to go online to take advantage of cheap natural gas. This has some clean air advocates worried.

“We’ve made significant progress,” said Larry Soward, a former regulator for the Texas commission and president of Air Alliance Houston. “But let’s not pat ourselves on the back too much. So far we have not met a single (federal) standard for ozone ­­and we’re talking about adding all these new pollution sources.”

Steve Smith, technical advisor to the industry­-funded Houston Regional Monitoring Network, which operates around a dozen air pollution monitoring stations around the city, says the key to keeping emissions low is simple: Keep an eye on it. “If you monitor, it will get better,” he said. “That’s exactly what happened here.”

Smith’s group tests for more than 150 pollutants to help oil, gas and petrochemical businesses meet federal air quality mandates. “We set up a network early on, where if we saw a value too high, we sent out a notice to the companies, saying ‘Look at what’s happening. See if you have something that’s going on.’”

Shell Seeks Ethane Supplies from “Wet” Frack Gas for Cracker Plant

From the Article by Jim Ross, State Journal, August 27, 2013

As Shell Chemical Co. moves closer to a decision on whether it will build a multi-billion-dollar ethane cracker plant in Pennsylvania, it is seeking more suppliers of raw materials from the Marcellus and Utica shale regions.

In an announcement issued August 27th, Shell said it is accepting bids from ethane suppliers through October 4^th. The site of the plant is near the town of Monaca in Beaver County, Pa., near West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle. “Securing additional ethane supply is one of the key components in determining next steps as part of the ongoing site evaluation process,” the company said in the statement issued this week.

If the complex is built, Shell Chemical expects that its upstream affiliate, Shell Western Exploration and Production Inc., would provide a portion of the ethane supply for the proposed petrochemical complex, the statement said. Shell said it has secured commitments from four companies already: CNX Gas Co. LLC, a subsidiary of Consol Energy; Hilcorp Energy Co.; Noble Energy; and ∫

“Shell Chemical still has several critical milestones to achieve before making a final investment decision on whether to proceed with construction of this proposed complex,” the statement said. The site Shell is considering is a zinc smelter owned by Horsehead Corp. On June 28, Horsehead said it had signed an agreement with Shell to extend Shell’s option on the property until the end of this year.

“The option that was in place expired at the end of June, but we’ve negotiated another six-month option through the end of the year. So we think that’s a very likely outcome, that they will exercise that option,” Horsehead Holding Corp. CEO James M. Hensler said in a conference call with investors several weeks ago, according to a transcript of the call by the website seekingalpha.com.

Ethane is a liquid that is a byproduct of drilling for natural gas in the shale gas region that includes northern West Virginia. The ethane molecule can be broken apart, or “cracked,” and put back together to form chemicals that are useful in various manufacturing processes and products.

Not all Marcellus shale regions produce liquids along with gas. Those that do are known as “wet gas” areas, and companies that produce gas are concentrating their efforts in those areas instead of “dray gas” areas, which produce less or no liquids.

In June 2011, Shell announced plans to assess the building of a world-scale petrochemical complex in the US Appalachian region that would upgrade locally produced ethane from shale gas production.

West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio competed to be designated as the preferred site for the plant. On March 15, 2012, Shell signed a land option agreement to evaluate the Monaca site.

Shell said it looked at various factors to select the preferred site. Among them:

•     Good access to liquids-rich natural gas resources and water;
•     Road and rail transportation infrastructure;
•     Power grids;
•     Economics;
•     Sufficient land to accommodate facilities for a world-scale petrochemical complex and potential future expansions.

In addition to an ethane cracker, Shell is also considering polyethylene (PE) and mono-ethylene glycol (MEG) units to help meet increasing demands in the North American market. The company anticipates that much of the PE and MEG production would be used by industries in the northeastern US.

The Shell plant would be the first by a major corporation in Appalachia, although other companies have announced plans to build smaller cracker plants. Some gas liquids are being taken (or plans are in place) from the shale regions by pipelines to crackers in other areas, including the Gulf Coast, .. (as well as Canada and the East Coast).

See also the recent post here on Shell’s favored treatment in Pennsylvania.  For more on this proposed cracker plant see here and here.