Shell’s massive plastics plant in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, started operations in late 2022

From LIVING ON EARTH, National Public Radio, Air Date: Week of June 30, 2023

Shell’s massive new ethane cracker plant in western Pennsylvania is sending polluted air and strange smells into the surrounding community. But a $10 million fine pales in comparison to the roughly $100 million a day that the company made in profits in the first quarter of 2023. Reid Frazier of the Allegheny Front discusses with Host Paloma Beltran the concerns of residents and a promised economic boom that hasn’t materialized.

TRANSCRIPT ~ BELTRAN: And I’m Paloma Beltran.

Even before it came online last year, the huge plastics plant Shell built on the banks of the Ohio River in Beaver County, Pennsylvania had problems with pollution. The plant is an “ethane cracker” that uses fracked gas to produce the common plastic called polyethylene, and it’s violated air quality rules and sent strange smells into the surrounding community. And although it has brought new jobs, a recent report from the nonprofit Ohio River Valley Institute suggests it hasn’t ushered in the economic boom that some anticipated. In May, Pennsylvania’s governor announced that Shell will pay a $10 million fine for its air quality violations. But that fine pales in comparison to the roughly $100 million a day that Shell made in profits in the first quarter of 2023. And the plant received a $1.65 billion tax credit over 25 years, the largest in Pennsylvania history.

BELTRAN: So, this Shell plant has been in the works for a long time. Can you describe it for us? How big is it, and how much plastic does it produce?

FRAZIER: It’s basically like a small city that they built to make plastic, there on the banks of the Ohio. At the top capacity, it will be able to make over three billion pounds of plastic every year. The greenhouse gas emissions from this facility are estimated to be the equivalent of 400 thousand cars on the road. So, it’s a pretty big greenhouse gas emitter, it’ll probably be, you know, one of the top few facilities in the state in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.

BELTRAN: Wow. And in May, you reported that Shell agreed to pay a $10 million fine after emissions from the plant violated state air quality rules. What were the violations, and what will the money be used

FRAZIER: Right, so the violations were for exceeding their state permit-allowed air pollution, essentially. They were allowed to pollute about 500 tons a year of volatile organic compounds. They basically exceeded that in September of 2022, when they had a lot of flaring, there were sort of equipment malfunctions, and when those malfunctions take place, they basically flare the gas as a way to get rid of it. And so that the gas doesn’t accumulate and cause an explosion. But when you do that you get rid of a lot of the pollution, but not all of it. So, in one month, they essentially hit their 12-month quota, even before the plant had started. And they’ve exceeded similar limits for carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, in subsequent months. And they’ve had other problems with air pollution. There was a release that caused benzene and volatile organic compounds to spike a couple months ago, workers reported headaches and irritation in their eyes, according to the company. There have just been a lot of problems. So, the state rolled all of these violations together into a $10 million fine. About half of the money goes to the state and half goes to the local area municipalities and such presumably to be done in — used in a sort of environmentally friendly or civic-minded way, but we don’t actually know what the money is going to be used for.

BELTRAN: Reid, you’ve been covering this project for a long time, and you’ve spoken to lots of people in Beaver County. How have community members responded to the plant?

FRAZIER: Well, obviously, a lot of people are upset that there is this ongoing pollution problem. I think most people hope that the company will clean its act up. There is a sort of acknowledgement that when you open up a big plant like this, there’s bound to be problems as you start bringing equipment online. That having been said, I think people were surprised by how much pollution has come from this plant. Even people who were big supporters of Shell coming to Beaver County. I talked to Jack Manning, who’s a Beaver County commissioner, so it’s like the local governing board. He actually used to work in the petrochemical industry in Beaver County. He’s basically said he’s still going to be supporting Shell, but they simply have to clean their act up. And these are his words.

MANNING: Well, I’ve also told people, if you cross a line that shouldn’t be crossed, we’re going to have a different conversation. And I can’t, I can’t defend you. And right now, nobody’s crossed that

FRAZIER: Other people are more upset, parents who’ve taken their kids to school on days when there were high benzene levels, and were understandably freaked out by the smell of gasoline in their backyard. That’s what one person told me. Somebody else reported that it smelled like burning plastic. And I think more than anything, ‘Wait, is this how it’s going to be for the rest of my life, if I stay here?’ This is the thought that a lot of people are having. But if you live like five miles away, you probably don’t experience this. And, they’re glad to see that there’s a plant with 600 workers there, and maybe they have friends or relatives who are working there or worked to build it and made a lot of money in construction. During the five or six years when it was under construction, there were something like six-to-eight thousand people working on it. So, it’s a mixed bag. I think the closer you are to the plant, the more you’re, worried about it.

BELTRAN: Of course, I mean, who wants to be smelling chemicals every day in their backyard? Some fossil fuel companies are looking to increase their foothold in the plastics industry as the world moves towards cleaner sources of energy. Is that pivot happening at all in Beaver County, or in Pennsylvania more generally?

FRAZIER: That remains to be seen. I think the Shell plant itself is an example of that pivot that you just described, where oil and gas companies are trying to figure out what they’re going to do in the next few decades, if people largely give up, gas-driven cars and such. And petrochemicals are a growing business still. There were plans for more of these to be built in the greater Ohio Valley region. There was one project that was on the docket in eastern Ohio. To date, it hasn’t been built, it hasn’t been approved. We’ll see if that changes in the next few years. But it’s unclear. Five or six years ago, it was thought that there would be five or six of these plants at some point, and now we’re not sure that’s actually going to happen in this region.

BELTRAN: In some ways, the world seems to be moving away from plastics. U.N. negotiators recently held talks over a potential treaty to address plastic pollution. But this plant is built to produce 3.5 billion pounds of polyethylene per year. What might that mean for pollution in Beaver County and

FRAZIER: We don’t know where this plastic is going to end up. It could end up overseas, actually. It could end up in North America, as plastic bottles or medical equipment or parts that go into vehicles, even electric vehicles. But we don’t know, that kind of information is not something that Shell is required to tell local regulators and local communities. But we do know that it’s likely that this plastic will be sent on railcars around the country. They have a massive rail yard with hopper cars, where they can just dump the nurdles, which are the little plastic beads. That’s the form that they produce. And so it seems pretty certain that there will be some rail activity related to these nurdles, and that they’ll basically go elsewhere.

BELTRAN: And we should mention that this plant is located barely a half hour’s drive from East Palestine, Ohio, where a freight train derailed in February and caused a toxic chemical spill. Has this shaped the way Beaver County residents are thinking about this ethane cracker?

FRAZIER: Definitely. The Shell plant, every few weeks, would flare up, or there would be gases, or they would have an exceedance of their pollution limits. And at the same time, you have this national calamity going on about 15 miles away. And the communities around the plant are also in — downwind of that East Palestine fallout. So, it’s kind of hard to escape, if you’re living there, all of this pollution.

BELTRAN: Do regulators or environmental groups have plans to address the plant’s pollution moving forward?

FRAZIER: I think the state has set up some guideposts for Shell. They have to submit plans for how they’re going to do certain things at the plant to prevent continued releases of these pollutants. But there’s no guarantee that this kind of thing won’t keep happening, and that Shell won’t keep paying fines when it does. You know, there’s a lawsuit that has been launched from environmental groups to kind of get the plant to stop polluting, and we’ll see where that goes. These groups can push on the regulator, and the regulator can push on the company, but it’s really up to the company to perform, get its processes in line with environmental regulations. The best people can do now is hope that that happens.

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See Also: Pennsylvania is just the latest sacrifice zone for the plastics industry, Kristina Marusic, Sierra Club, September 15, 2022

Shell ranks in the top 10 among the 90 companies that are responsible for two-thirds of historic greenhouse gas emissions. Its Potter Township (BeaverCounty) cracker plant is expected to emit up to 2.25 million tons of climate-warming gases annually, equivalent to approximately 430,000 extra cars on the road.

Construction phase of Shell Cracker Plant in Monaca, PA, October 2019

Spokespersons for both PTT Global Chemical America and JobsOhio said this week the company remains committed to building the multi-billion dollar project in southeast Ohio’s Belmont County as PTTGCA continues searching for an investment partner.

The $20 million was paid to Bechtel Corp. in 2019 to complete site engineering and site preparation for a plant that would convert ethane – a byproduct of natural gas drilling from the Utica and Marcellus shale fields – into different types of polyethylene, raw materials for products that range from plastic bottles to vehicle parts.

The project has been optimistically viewed as a potential economic development boost for an Appalachian region still struggling from the loss of manufacturing jobs decades ago. The plant, its backers say, would create thousands of construction jobs and hundreds of permanent positions and spawn a manufacturing renaissance along the Ohio River.

A similar $6 billion petrochemical plant built by Shell Chemical Appalachia LLC 30 miles (50 kilometers) northwest of Pittsburgh is scheduled to begin operations this year. Shell announced its final investment decision in 2016. News that PTTGC would partner with a Japanese company to build a petrochemical plant in Belmont County first surfaced in 2015, spurring talk of a regional petrochemical hub to take advantage of abundant supplies of ethane.

In an interview with The Associated Press this week, Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted expressed skepticism about whether the Ohio plant would be built. “They can’t find a partner because of market conditions,” Husted said. “They’re the ones who made the promise on what they’re going to do, and it’s up to them.”

Husted said the site, which is owned by PTTCGA, would be attractive to other developers. “There’s a lot of options for other end users,” Husted said. “The last thing I’m going to do is create a false hope. People in Appalachia have been promised a lot of things that businesses never delivered.”

PTTGCA spokesperson Dan Williamson said the company has invested $300 million in the project thus far and that company officials are committed to building the plant. He said there is no deadline for a decision on building it. “If the company wasn’t still hopeful of this happening, they would not continue to invest in it,” Williamson said.

JobsOhio spokesperson Matt Englehart blamed the coronavirus pandemic for the delay in an investment decision that resulted in PTTGCA paying back the $20 million. A U.S. subsidiary of South Korea’s Daelim Industrial Co. withdrew as PTTGCA’s partner in July 2020.

JobsOhio, which is funded with profits from Ohio liquor sales, has provided an additional $50 million in grants and loans for developing the site where a FirstEnergy Corp. coal-burning power plant once stood.

“PTTGCA remains committed to the project, and JobsOhio and its partners continue to work closely with PTTGCA to bring the project to a positive final investment decision,” Englehart said in a statement, adding that PTTGCA is “actively pursuing investors.”

PTTGCA is “in the process” of resubmitting its expired air permit to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, Williamson said. The permit will reflect PTT Global Chemical’s commitment to reducing global emissions 20% by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050, he added.

The Ohio EPA recently renewed the company’s wastewater discharge permit.

Working in the company’s favor is that prices for polyethylene and other raw plastics have rebounded since a steep drop in 2020. Analysts say global demand for plastic products will continue to rise this decade.

Steam Cracker Chemical Plants are huge and profitable using cheap ethane, and emit millions of tons of carbon dioxide plus ....

From an Article by Chase Rogers, Corpus Christi Caller Times, March 24, 2022

SAN PATRICIO COUNTY — Years after selecting the Coastal Bend as the site for its new ethylene cracker plant, ExxonMobil and Saudi Basic Industries Corp. held a ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the startup for the new facility. Nearly 300 people attended the Wednesday event, which marked the “successful startup” of the $7 billion Gulf Coast Growth Ventures facility located on a 16-acre plot of land near Gregory in South Texas.

The facility progressively began operations last year, producing materials used in packaging, agricultural film, construction materials and clothing. The operation includes a 1.8 million metric ton per year ethane steam cracker, two polyethylene units capable of producing up to 1.3 million metric tons per year, and a monoethylene glycol unit with a capacity of 1.1 million metric tons per year.

“I can say with 100% confidence that Gulf Coast Growth Ventures is a very, very special facility built in a very, very special place. … We couldn’t have done it without you, the people in this room,” GCGV president and site manager Paul Frisch told the attendees, which included representatives from each of the companies, community leaders and elected officials.

Construction on the facility began in 2019 after the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality granted GCGV permits following a contested case hearing, wherein concerns were raised by environmental groups and local residents.

The construction process of the facility produced an estimated 6,000 construction jobs. Now completed, the manufacturing plant currently employs more than 600 full-timers, Frisch said.

While ExxonMobil and SABIC have partnered for 40 years on petrochemical projects, Gulf Coast Growth Ventures represents their first joint venture in the Americas. Ownership interests in GCGV are evenly divided with 50% to ExxonMobil and 50% to SABIC. ExxonMobil is the site operator, according to a GCGV news release.

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American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) ~ Pittsburgh Local Section Event

“Completing Construction of Shell’s New Ethane Cracker in the Ohio River Valley at Monaca, PA”

DATE & TIME: Wednesday, April 6, 2022 ++ 6:00 to 9:00 pm

Agenda: 6:00 pm – Registration & Networking, 6:30 pm – Buffet Dinner, 7:15 pm – Presentation, 8:00 pm – Q&A

The Hilton Garden Inn was built in 2019 on a bluff overlooking the $6 billion construction site where workers are completing construction of this new facility. The hotel is located about 1/2 mile from the Monaca exit (39) on I-376, about 10 miles north of the Pittsburgh Airport.

Come for a great meal and an indepth discussion about how this large plant was designed and built. It has been reported that this is the largest single construction project ever in Western PA.

For more information about this project, see articles at:

Shell Polymers … State Impact PA … Wikipedia

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Braskem Idesa chemical plant in Veracruz, Mexico

From an Article by Renzo Pipoli, Reuters Events, October 12, 2021

Brakem agreed on “adjusting” once very favorable terms on its long-term contract to buy Mexican ethane after a year of talks and following an initial adamant Brazilian stance later softened after Mexicans late last year temporarily forced its Veracruz cracker and polyethylene plant shutdown.

Braskem reported an accord that replaced the original terms of its 20-year contract with the Mexican state oil company Pemex. Braskem’s majority owner is Novonor, formerly known as Odebrecht. The biggest minority owner of Braskem is the Brazilian state oil company Petrobras.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had sought changes claiming the deal had allowed Brazilians to buy Mexican ethane way below market, and get free shipping even when state oil Pemex needed to import the feedstock from the U.S. to deliver it.

Pemex will no longer face the dilemma of either importing ethane to give to Braskem below cost or else face hefty fines, and a full construction investment refund clause in case of early termination was scrapped, Mexican media reported.

Braskem and its minority partner Grupo Idesa completed the $5.2-billion complex with just over a million tonnes annual capacity in April 2016. The investment resulted from an auction by Mexico to sell ethane in 2009. The partners had won in public bidding, Braskem Idesa had stressed in past releases.

For nearly all of 2020 Braskem insisted on keeping terms, and reported an internal company investigation didn’t find any wrongdoing. Then Mexican President Lopez Obrador’s government forced Braskem Idesa to abruptly shut down the ethylene and polyethylene complex late last year by cutting off its energy supplies.

Shutting plant down — The Braskem Idesa venture said at the end of 2020 that Mexican officials acted irresponsibly as the abrupt power cutoff without notice prevented a shutdown under safety protocols. The sudden interruption of power and shutdown also caused supply problems for thousands of Mexicans that worked further downstream in the industry like distributors and plastic converters, it said. There was no warning before to at least alert customers, the company said.

A temporary agreement allowed a restart in early 2021 pending an accord as talks continued. The new agreement establishes new volume and price commitments for the supply of ethane from Pemex, Braskem Idesa said. Future deliveries will be “in line” with availability of this feedstock in Mexico, it said. It did not provide other details related to changes to the original 66,000-barrels-per-day supply accord.

New import terminals — Braskem-Idesa said the Mexican Gulf region where its cracker and polyethylene plant is located will see a $400-million investment but didn’t provide a breakdown.

Braskem’s project involves a 16-mile pipeline and a $50-million floating storage, El Sol de Mexico said on Aug. 24. Braskem Idesa is also building a bigger project to store fuel on land with a $150-million investment, it added.

It also said that the new accord involved using independent U.S. Gulf Coast references. Braskem Idesa imports ethane from the region.

The agreement eliminated fines that prompted Lopez Obrador to describe the deal with Brazilians as “leonine” (outstanding), El Sol de Mexico said.

Adjusting terms — Braskem Idesa said on Sep. 28 that the agreement will allow Braskem Idesa, “over time, to produce polyethylene at full capacity.”

.Braskem and Idesa, with 75% and 25% equity, announced in 2012 the borrowing of $3.2 billion to finance most of the project’s $5.2-billion total cost. Standard & Poor’s increased Baskem Idesa’s rating to B+ from B after the accord to adjust the terms was disclosed.

In the U.S. Braskem and Odebrecht pled guilty on Dec. 2016 in what was described at the time as the largest foreign bribery case in history and agreed to pay $3.5 billion to solve charges in Brazil, the U.S. and Switzerland.

Odebrecht trial delayed a year — On July 17 2020 Mexico was able to get extradited from Spain former Pemex CEO Emilio Lozoya. While Lozoya incriminated former Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto with Odebrecht-related campaign funding, the trial is so far delayed by a year, Expansion reported.

Braskem also said that despite not working at full capacity, resin production since its April 2016 inauguration has added $4 billion in exports and created thousands of direct and indirect jobs. The shutdown coincided with a Mexican polymer market that was very tight and inventory building was urgent.

Lopez Obrador had in the past estimated losses to Mexico from the Braskem Idesa contract at about $683 million. He won a six-year presidential term in 2018 that started in December of that year. The 67-year old president ran on a campaign centered on fighting corruption and retaining control of the country’s energy assets.

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Reuters Events News Brief: “Dow may expand ethylene, polyethylene complex in Canada” — Dow said on October 6th that it plans to triple its ethylene and polyethylene capacity in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta and turn the asset into a net-zero emissions complex.

Company directors must still approve the investment that would increase Dow’s ethylene and polyethylene global production capacity by 15% and de-carbonize 20% of its total output. The cracker will add 1.8 million metric tons of capacity “in a phased manner through 2030,” Dow added. This will allocate approximately $1 billion of capital expenditures annually if there is a positive decision.

MOTHER JONES IS VERY CONCERNED ABOUT PLASTICS POLLUTION

From an Article by Rebecca Leber, Mother Jones Magazine, March 3, 2020

Fossil fuel companies feel threatened by alternative energy—and they’re counting on plastic to save them.

Let’s say you lost your headphones, so you order replacements on Amazon. They arrive in a blue-and-white Amazon-branded plastic envelope. Inside, there’s a clear plastic bag, and inside that, a hard plastic container, and inside that, finally, the headphones themselves, which are mostly plastic.

I know the feeling that comes next: a twinge of guilt about all the unnecessary packaging, because you’ve read how our plastics have been accumulating in landfills, wildlife, and the ocean. Perhaps you’ve vowed to change your plastic-loving ways—maybe by forgoing Amazon orders or bringing your own bags to the grocery store. That’s a good start, but it won’t fix the real reason we’re drowning in a glut of supply. Fossil fuel companies are staring down a time when their signature product will no longer be so critical in our lives. As the world transitions slowly but surely away from fuel-guzzling cars, gas-powered buildings, and coal-fired power plants, industry execs must count on growth that comes from somewhere else—and they see their savior as plastics.

Those plastic-laden headphones are just one of a dizzying array of products made by the petrochemical sector, which uses fossil fuels to produce plastics, fertilizers, detergents, and even the fibers in much of our clothing. In the last decade, petrochemicals have moved from a sideshow for the oil and gas industry to a major profit machine, and the trend is expected to accelerate:

The energy research group International Energy Agency predicts that plastics’ consumption of oil will outpace that of cars by 2050. In a recent report about its 20-year growth, ExxonMobil executives assured shareholders that the company could offset losses from the transition to electric cars with growth in petrochemicals. Despite BP’s own pledge to cut its operations’ oil and gas emissions by 2050, the company has a notable carve-out for the oil and gas consumed by its petrochemical production.

A lot of that growth in petrochemicals is happening in the United States. Traditionally, most plastics have come from foreign petroleum. But plastic can also be made from ethane, an abundant byproduct of the gas extracted through fracking. With plenty of ethane flooding the market, the petrochemical industry has raced to build plants, called ethane crackers. Using incredibly high temperatures, these facilities (sometimes fueled by their own dedicated power plants) “crack” the molecular bonds of the ethane to form the building blocks of plastics, such as polyethylene. Since the US market is so saturated with plastics, many of these new facilities export these materials around the world for manufacturing into the products we recognize, from packaging to polyester clothing.

There are climate impacts at every point of the lifecycle of plastics. The production process consumes fossil fuels both to make the plastics and maintain the high temperatures for refining and manufacturing. Methane, which is both a fuel and a potent greenhouse gas, tends to leak during drilling, transport, and refining, making it an underestimated source of pollution from the oil and gas industry.

Emerging research has shown how polyethylene releases greenhouse gases when it breaks down and might interfere with the tiny algae plants that play an essential role in helping the oceans absorb excess carbon. Even when recyclable plastics make it to blue bins, much of it ends up in landfills and about 12 percent is burned at an incinerator to generate energy—which vents toxic fumes into nearby communities and more carbon pollution into the atmosphere.

A 2019 report by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) found that emissions from the plastics sector already rose 15 percent from 2012 to 2018. Last year alone, the CIEL, using Environmental Integrity Project data, estimated that plastic production contributed the equivalent of 189 large coal plants.

If plastics production continues apace, the sector is on track to reach the equivalent annual pollution of 295 large coal plants in the next 10 years, and double that by 2050, according to CIEL. An International Energy Agency report from 2018 indicated that carbon pollution from the petrochemical sector is going up 30 percent by 2050 over the sector’s current rate.

The plastics production problem might be new for the general American public, but it isn’t for the communities of color that have long bordered existing plants. Michele Roberts, a coordinator with the Environmental Justice Health Alliance, points out that chemical plants have historically been built in predominantly African American communities living in poverty, like the industrial plants that have lined the Gulf Coast, nicknamed “Cancer Alley.”

The new hub of petrochemicals growth has been in both the Gulf and western Pennsylvania. North of Corpus Christi, Texas, ExxonMobil secured hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks for a massive planned steam cracker to be built by 2022, located within a mile from a high school and middle school. Texas has seen four major fires at petrochemical plants in the last year alone, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate to escape the carcinogenic air. “There’s a whole lifecycle trajectory that today impacts people of color and the poor in a major, disparate way,” Roberts says.

Even as awareness of plastics’ environmental effects has grown, the industry has never done better business. According to the chemicals and fossil fuel lobby American Chemistry Council, 340 chemical industry facilities (a number that includes more than just plastics, like fertilizer) have been announced since 2010. Of those, 190 are already underway, concentrated in fracking boomtowns in western Pennsylvania and along the Gulf Coast. One of the most massive under construction is Shell’s Monaca, Pennsylvania facility, which will be capable of producing 1.6 million metric tons of plastics each year. It will have its own rail system of 3,300 freight cars, capable of producing the equivalent of half a million cars’ worth of carbon pollution and more than a million tons of plastic resins annually, according to the New York Times.

Other oil companies have been racing to compete with even bigger deals: Chevron inked a deal last year with Qatar Petroleum for an $8 billion ethane cracker along the Gulf Coast that would pump out 2 million metric tons of ethylene each year—by 2024. And ExxonMobil is building a 1.8 million metric ton ethane steam cracker with a Saudi Arabian company near Houston to be completed by 2022.

President Trump has publicly celebrated the ascent of plastics. At an official White House event held at the Shell construction site in Monaca, he cheered the plant as a sign of the end of American dependence on foreign oil and gas. “We don’t need it from the Middle East anymore,” he said. He insisted that plastic pollution wasn’t the United States’ problem. “It’s plastic that’s floating over in the ocean and the various oceans from other places” that’s causing pollution, he said. “Plastics are fine, but you have to know what to do with them. But other countries are not taking care of their plastic use and they haven’t for a long time.”

The plastics industry takes that argument a step further, claiming that its wares help us move away from fossil fuels. For example, the American Chemistry Council claims on its website that plastics lighten products, “which means companies can ship more product with less fuel. Plastics used in cars helps make them lighter and more fuel efficient. And from appliances to electronics plastics can help to achieve greater energy efficiency over the course of a product’s life.”

It’s true that plastics can lighten the loads of vehicles and planes, but that isn’t the bulk of the plastics problem. The biggest source for plastics waste, and the fastest-growing problem for oceans and waterways, is the kind we use in clothing and for food packaging and shipping.

Judith Enck, a former EPA northeast regional administrator and founder of the environmental coalition Beyond Plastics, believes that focusing on how plastic makes cars lighter is a distraction. The real problem, she argues, is that the glut of gas has made plastics incredibly cheap, intensifying the world’s growing hunger for more single-use plastics. Ethane crackers are not an offramp from oil, she says—instead, they’re another way of embedding fossil fuels in our daily lives. “Plastics keep us on the fossil fuel treadmill.”

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See also: Researchers Now Have Even More Proof That Air Pollution Can Cause Dementia, Aaron Reuben, Mother Jones Magazine, May 2, 2019

A Mother Jones investigation prompted the study that turned up the most convincing evidence to date.

Braskem petrochemical plant lighted up at night

News Briefs from PetroChem Update, June 4, 2020

1. Thailand’s PTT Global Chemical sets new FID deadline by March 2021

Thailand-based PTT Global Chemical’s Final Investment Decision (FID) on whether to build an ethylene-polyethylene complex in Belmont County, Ohio will be announced by the end of March 2021, PTTGC America said on June 1, 2020.

“While the pandemic has prevented us from moving as quickly as we would like within our previous timeline, our best estimate is for an FID by the end of this year or in the first quarter of next year,” said PTTGC America President and CEO Toasaporn Boonyapipat.

The new date is a postponement of the FID of up to nine months. A report by the Thai embassy in Washington D.C. had estimated in February an FID “by the middle of this year.”

As the mid-2020 date approached and following industry commentary related to an indefinite postponement, a company spokesperson replied in mid-May to an e-mail inquiry saying PTTGCA could not provide at that time any firm timeline for an FID decision.

2. Dow’s Fort Saskatchewan PE expansion timeline unchanged

(Story was updated on June 12 to include a reply from Dow saying project timeline unchanged.)

Dow Canada’s project to incrementally expand capacity at its ethylene facility in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta through the addition of another furnace remains ongoing, a company official said by email on June 12.

“We have not announced any changes to the project timeline,” a company spokesperson said.

The comment follows a request for an update following reports that the company was likely to delay construction work for an expansion of an existing polyethylene plant in Western Canada due to Covid-19 contagion concerns.

Bob Masterson, CEO of the Chemistry Industry Association of Canada, estimated the project investment at about C$250 million. He had said early in the month in an interview that a potential delay was likely due to safety concerns as bringing contract workers could be a risk to adjacent operations.

The expansion will add 130,000 tonnes of annual polyethylene capacity to current production.

Dow announced the expansion on January 29, 2020 saying at the time that 700 workers were going to participate in the construction. It didn’t provide a cost but estimated completion by end of the first half of 2021. The Canadian Press estimated at the time the investment at C$200 million.

3. Braskem widens net losses in first quarter 2020

Brazil-based Braskem posted on June 3 a net financial result loss of 6.2 billion reais (about $1.2 billion) or more than double compared with a net financial result loss of 2.9 billion reais in the fourth quarter of 2019, as it cited currency depreciation.

The first quarter net financial result loss is several times deeper compared with the Latin America’s biggest petrochemical company net financial result loss of 923 million reais in the first quarter of 2019.

Braskem also said the net loss attributable to shareholders for the first quarter of 2020 was only 3.6 billion reais. This compares with a similar net loss attributable to shareholders of 2.9 billion reais in the previous quarter.

Braskem also said its first quarter 2020 EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) was $294 million, 22% higher than in the fourth quarter of 2019.

The on-quarter EBITDA increase resulted from higher sales volume of resins in the Brazilian market, polypropylene (PP) in the United States and Europe, and polyethylene (PE) in Mexico.

However, total EBITDA decreased on-year by 34% in dollar terms. The decline from the first quarter of 2019 was due to lower spreads in the international market, Braskem said.

EBITDA just for the United States and Europe was $62 million, up 33% from the fourth quarter of 2019 because of “capacity utilization rates normalization in the U.S. and the re-stocking trend in the chain in Europe due to (Covid-19) uncertainties.”

As for Mexico alone, the EBITDA was $79 million or 2% higher than in the fourth quarter of 2019. This represented 21% of the company’s consolidated EBITDA.

“The increase in (Mexico’s) EBITDA is mainly explained by the growth in PE sales volume supported by the higher supply of ethane,” the company said.

Braskem Idesa imported 12,600 tons of ethane from the United States during the first quarter.

This helped to offset in part a reduction in the supply of ethane by Pemex. Braskem said that resin demand in the Brazilian market (PE, PP and PVC) grew 3% compared with the first quarter of 2019, reflecting the recovery in construction, consumer goods, packaging and agriculture.

In relation to the fourth quarter of 2019, demand growth of 7% was due to seasonality, it said.

Braskem also reported an unscheduled shutdown of its Rio Grande do Sul polyethylene integrated unit, which resulted in lower capacity utilization rate of its cracker.

Ethylene production increased at the cracker in Bahia compared with the fourth quarter of 2019, when it underwent maintenance.

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A threat from above: Plastic rains down on US National Parks and Wilderness areas

From an Article by Kate S. Petersen, Environmental Health News, June 9, 2020

New research estimates more than 1,000 tons of microplastic particles, potentially circulating in global atmospheric currents, are deposited at conservation sites each year.

Last August, scientists delivered the chilling news that microplastics suspended in the Earth’s atmosphere were being deposited in remote areas of the Arctic and Europe. Now researchers report similar microplastic accumulation in iconic American protected areas including the Grand Canyon and Joshua Tree.

Publishing their results today in Science, the researchers estimate total yearly plastics deposition over their study area to be the equivalent of 123 to 300 million discarded water bottles.

The study is the first to calculate rates of microplastic pollution from the atmosphere onto American protected areas and adds to a growing body of research suggesting that microplastics are traveling long distances in the atmosphere. Microplastic pollution can harm wildlife health, and the researchers expressed concern about potential impacts to ecosystem stability in fragile and unique protected areas of the U.S.

Janice Brahney, an assistant professor at Utah State University and lead scientist on the new report, made the discovery while analyzing atmospheric dust—particles that get swept up into the atmosphere and then settle out again.

Examining the dust under a microscope, she found something she did not expect. “Scrolling around these samples, I started to see all these colorful pieces,” Brahney told EHN. “Nearly every single sample had plastic in it.”

Braskem and Odebrecht have withdrawn from the ASCENT

From an Article by Brad McElhinny, West Virginia MetroNews, July 23, 2019

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The developers of a proposed petrochemical cracker plant that generated buzz several years ago have officially withdrawn, state officials said, but they’re still working to encourage other possible developers.

Then-Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin announced the possibility of a petrochemical complex in 2013, calling it a “game changer.” The site was a long-time chemical plant location south of Parkersburg. The site, most recently held by a company called SABIC was more than 300 acres.

But the $4 billion cracker plant has never come to be as complications arose with the Braskem and Odebrecht companies that were behind it. The companies in 2015 said the project was being reevaluated.

Mike Graney, director of the West Virginia Development Office, was updating a group of lawmakers about recent contacts with natural gas developers when he described the status of the cracker project.

“Braskem, who owned 380 acres, I think, in Washington Works, has agreed they are not going to build a cracker and they are quietly marketing that property,” Graney said.

“And they really want to guide that decision because they’d like to see another cracker built so they’re marketing to that group of companies that could make that investment. So that’s big news. Big news because that’s sort of moving this thing forward.”

Delegate John Kelly, R-Wood said “I think that site probably is one of the best opportunities for a cracker or other investment in the state of West Virginia.”

“It has everything on that site that you need. You have close to highways, we have rails, we have river transportation and naturally we have the airport, which doesn’t do anything for product but it does get executives in and out of the area.”

Kelly has wanted to see more development on the site. “I’m extremely concerned that we haven’t seen more activity on it,” he said, alluding to the complications between the two companies that had meant to partner on it.

The lawmakers gathered to hear comments by Steven Winberg, assistant secretary for fossil energy for the U.S. Department of Energy. Winberg told lawmakers that the natural gas in the Appalachian Region has made it ripe for historic development potential. “We are on the edge of an Appalachian chemical renaissance that scarcely could have been imagined a decade ago,” Winberg said.

He said the development will produce “family-sustaining employment for decades into the future.” He said that includes not only the drilling already seen in the region but also larger projects such as cracker plants of an enormous natural gas storage hub. “What we need, ladies and gentlemen, is one of these crackers in West Virginia.”

Winberg said that the Appalachian Region is likely to complete with the Gulf Coast states of Texas and Louisiana. And within this region, West Virginia will be competing with Pennsylvania and Ohio. “If West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania were an independent country, the three states would be the third largest nat gas producer in the world,” he said.

Winberg suggested that West Virginia should continue to prepare for development possibilities with shovel-ready sites. He acknowledged that many people may feel like they have been hearing for years about the kind of development that has not actually happened so far. “I hear people all the time saying when is this going to happen? It takes years because these are massive capital projects,” Winberg said.

Delegate Kelly underscored that point with his own question. “We’ve talked about cracker plants the last four or five years. We’ve talked about a storage hub the last four or five years. And we don’t really see a lot of progress,” he said. “What is holding up progress in the state of West Virginia?”

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Cracker Plant/ Storage Hub Public Meeting

Wednesday, August 7th 6-8:30pm
St. Clairsville Recreation Center
102 Fair Ave., St. Clairsville, OH 43950

The proposed PTTG ethane cracker plant in Belmont County, OH and the Appalachian Petrochemical Storage Hub and what the community can do to protect their air, water, and future of the Ohio River Valley.

Web-Site: www.nocrackerplantOV.com

E-mail: wewantcleanwater@gmail.com

Facebook: Concerned Ohio River Residents

Huge process tower erected at Shell’s cracker facility

From an Article by Heather Doyle, Petrochemical Update, October 19, 2018

Shell has completed a substantial step in the construction of its Pennsylvania Petrochemicals Complex, bringing the Northeast chemicals hub dream another step closer to reality.

Shell said on October 10, 2018 it had successfully installed the project’s largest piece of equipment: a 285-foot cooling and condensation tower for gas and other hydrocarbons.

At approximately 2,000 tonnes, the tower spent more than three and a half weeks in transit up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers and required one of the world’s largest cranes to lift it into place.

Upon arrival in Pennsylvania, it was unloaded onto a dock and transported down a newly-created road – both specially-designed to handle the large quench tower.

The heavy lift of the quench tower, undertaken October 7, marked an important milestone in the project.

Shell took the final investment decision on the Pennsylvania Petrochemicals Complex in June 2016. The site preparation program ended in November 2017, with Shell announcing the start of main construction. Commercial production is expected to begin early next decade.

Since the start of main construction in November 2017, Shell has also safely erected two of three reactors associated with the planned polyethylene units and laid around 15 miles of underground pipe for the cooling, firewater and drainage systems.

The project is bringing economic growth and jobs to the region, with some 3,000 workers on site. That number will likely increase to 6,000 by the end of 2019 through its construction phase. Shell expects around 600 onsite jobs when the complex is completed.

The petrochemicals complex will use ethane from shale-gas producers in the Marcellus and Utica basins to produce 1.6 million tonnes of polyethylene per year.

The complex will include four processing units – an ethane cracker and three polyethylene units. Two polyethylene units will manufacture high-density polyethylene (HDPE) grades of pellets and a third unit will produce linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) pellets.

The Shell petrochemical complex in Pennsylvania will be the first major U.S. project of its type to be built outside the Gulf Coast in 20 years, but many say Shell is paving the way for a major Appalachia petrochemical industry.

“There is more than enough ethane in the Northeast region now for another two to three world scale crackers,” U.S. Energy Information Administration Industry Economist Warren Wilczewski said while speaking at Petrochemical Update’s Northeast U.S. Petrochemical Construction Conference in 2017.

Surging supply of ethane is expected to come from the Marcellus and Utica shales over the next several years. By 2020, a quarter of U.S. ethane will be produced in Appalachia, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Pipelines, infrastructure and storage are still necessary for the northeast petrochemicals hub to become a reality, players caution. According to analysts, a storage solution is a crucial next step in transforming the Appalachian Basin and its natural gas assets into a petrochemical production center.

A proposed multibillion-dollar regional storage complex for natural gas liquids sourced from the Marcellus, Utica and Rogersville shale plays moved one step closer to reality in August when Parsons was named engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) partner for the buildout of the Appalachia Storage and Trading Hub (ASTH).

Parsons will initially focus on the pre-front end engineering design (FEED) including project management and execution planning. Subsequent phases would include constructing the $3.4 billion project and its long-term operation.

http://analysis.petchem-update.com/operations-maintenance/shell-reaches-engineering-milestone-northeast

The accidents and pollution continue ...

By Dustin White, Opinion – Editorial, Charleston Gazette, June 8, 2018

Recently, we’ve been seeing a lot of opinion pieces and articles in the local media telling us how great the proposed Appalachian Storage and Trading Hub will be for our economy.

While the name of the proposed hub sounds benign, it’s anything but.

The project is a massive petrochemical complex that will rival the area known as “Cancer Alley” in Louisiana and will make the current Chemical Valley in Charleston look minuscule.

This new Cancer Alley in our region is being neatly packaged and sold to us by a select group of individuals seeking to make themselves rich at the cost of our health and economic well-being. The primary focus of this hub is to store and refine fracked gas liquids to manufacture more plastics, in a world already drowning in plastics.

First, a big incentive to build this petrochem infrastructure in West Virginia is a $83.7 billion Memorandum of Understanding with China. The Trump administration, with state government backing, signed this MOU last November without any input from the people of West Virginia.

I don’t know about you, but I would like to be consulted before being sold to another country. This MOU has still yet to be released to the public, even after several Freedom of Information Act requests on the state and federal levels.

At the signing in China was our very own commerce secretary, Woody Thrasher. In what is obviously a conflict of interest, Thrasher still owns 70 percent of the Thrasher Group, which is a contractor for oil and gas fracking infrastructure and other projects that would feed this plastic manufacturing monster.

Then there is WVU professor Brian Anderson. Anderson lends his professional title as director of WVU’s Energy Institute to scholarly studies supporting the hub. Anderson is also one of the chief principals for the Appalachian Development Group LLC — the primary group signed on to the China MOU. The ADG is responsible for the initial concept and marketing phase and is owned jointly by the Mid-Atlantic Technology, Research and Innovation Center (MATRIC) and the WVU Innovation Corporation. ADG has also been invited to apply for a $1.9 billion loan from the Department of Energy, meaning taxpayer dollars will be tapped for this complex.

West Virginia’s congressional delegation on both sides of the aisle have not only publicly promoted the hub and introduced several pieces of legislation in Congress to support and fast track this boondoggle, but they also have received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions this election cycle from oil, gas and petrochemical companies.

Joe Manchin received a $10,000 campaign donation from the American Chemistry Council after he introduced the Appalachian Ethane Storage Study Act of 2017, according to opensecrets.org. In turn, the American Chemistry Council, along with other interested parties, deployed a team of lobbyists in D.C. to work on the bills our delegation has sponsored.

Most recently, we have seen opinion pieces in support of the petrochem hub from the likes of former state legislator Brooks McCabe and former congressional candidate Howard Swint, both of whom could be in a position to make money from the project. McCabe is a commercial realtor who owns land with depleted gas wells near the Kanawha State Forest, in hub “areas of interest.” These areas have potential for storage of volatile fracked gas liquids awaiting transport to refineries. Swint is a commercial property broker.

So, people who appear set to line their own pockets are waging a P.R. campaign to promote a mega-petrochemical complex as a shiny, fabulous game-changer for our state. But it is just the same old, deadly game: We sacrifice our water and land and health to a fossil fuel industry.

To make things even worse, these hucksters are using the state’s economic hard times — from the downturn of the coal industry — to manipulate the public into thinking this project is a good thing.

We deserve better than opportunistic profiteers looking to get rich off another round of suffering for ordinary West Virginians.

>>> Dustin White is project coordinator with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, which is based in Huntington.

URL:

https://www.wvgazettemail.com/opinion/gazette_opinion/op_ed_commentaries/dustin-white-petrochemical-complex-not-good-for-wv-gazette/article_a37149eb-d2c9-5f60-8476-ea7f3ac29849.html

Ethane cracker chemical complex in planning for Ohio Valley

From a Pulse Item by Choi Jae-won and Choi Mira, Maeil Business News (Korea), January 30, 2018

Daelim Industrial Co., a South Korean construction and petrochemical company, will put up about $131 million to establish a petrochemical complex in Ohio, the United States, in partnership with Thailand’s largest petrochemical and refining firm PTT Global Chemical (PTTGC).

The company announced in a disclosure that it plans to sign an investment agreement with PTTGC’s U.S. subsidiary PTTGC America to construct and jointly operate an ethane cracking center (ECC) that discomposes ethane to produce ethylene and a polyethylene plant. It said it would invest up to 140 billion won ($130.7 million) in the joint project. Details of the plan including the size of investment and stake share will be worked out by the end of this year.

Ohio is home to shale gas reserves and rich in ethane. Its geographic proximity to the U.S. eastern region that takes up 70 percent of the country’s polyethylene market also could save logistics cost.

Once operation begins four to five years later, the complex will produce 1.5 million tons of ethylene and polyethylene a year.

Shares of Daelim Industrial are publicly traded in Seoul (South Korea).

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See also the reports on Plastics and Toxic Chemicals at “Living on Earth” (loe.org)