Frack Check WV » gas processing

MarkWest’s Sherwood Complex in Doddridge County is Huge & Expanding

S. Tom Bond — Mon, 15 Apr 2019 14:36:37 +0000

This facility is on US Route 50 east of West Union

MarkWest’s Sherwood Complex in Doddridge County, WV, plans further capacity expansion in 2019

From an Article by Charles Young, WV News, 4/13/2019

WEST UNION — The operators of the MarkWest Sherwood Complex in Doddridge County plan to further expand the facility’s capacity this year.

Randall Eastham, facility manager of the Sherwood Complex, said it has 2.2 billion standard cubic feet per day of processing capacity, making it the largest gas-processing facility in the nation.

“We plan to expand it by another 400 million cubic feet per day this year,” he said. “Gas processing removes the heavier and more valuable hydrocarbon components of natural gas, which are extracted as a mixed natural gas liquids (NGL) stream, which includes ethane, propane, butane and natural gasoline.”

Liquid natural gas has multiple commercial applications, Eastham said. “They are used as inputs for petrochemical plants, burned for space heating and cooking and blended into vehicle fuel,” he said. “In addition, Sherwood has a 60,000-barrel per day de-ethanization plant, which removes ethane from the other NGLs. We plan to expand this de-ethanization capacity by 20,000 barrels per day this year.”

MarkWest is a wholly owned subsidiary of MPLX. The Sherwood Complex first began operations in October 2012, according to Jamal Kheiry, communications manager for Marathon Petroleum Corp.

Sam Schupbach, vice president of Operations Processing for MPLX’s Gathering and Processing segment, said the company employs more than 200 workers in West Virginia. The company has spent more than $10 billion building infrastructure in the region over the last decade, Schupbach said.

In 2017, MPLX entered into a partnership with Antero Resources, which allowed it to expand the Sherwood Complex’s capacity, Schupbach said.

“We formed a joint venture with Antero Midstream Partners LP to support Antero Resources’ development in the Marcellus Shale,” he said. “At the time we formed the joint venture, Sherwood’s six cryogenic processing facilities had a total capacity of 1.2 billion cubic feet per day.

“At the time the joint venture was formed, ongoing development of gas processing infrastructure included three new joint-venture processing facilities totaling an additional 600 million cubic feet per day of processing capacity for Antero Resources. Since then, another 400 million cubic feet per day of capacity has been added.”

MPLX has plans in the works for another natural gas facility in Doddridge County to be called the Smithburg Complex, which will have the capacity to process 1.2 billion cubic feet per day, Schupbach said. An expected in-service date has not yet determined for the future facility, Schupbach said.

Doddridge County Commission President Greg Robinson said the Sherwood Complex is an important contributor to the local economy. “The plant itself provides real estate taxes, but there’s also numerous pipelines that feed that plant,” he said. “And those are all part of the tax. When a facility provides employment in addition to the tax base, that helps the community and helps the people — it’s how some residents earn their income.”

The facility and its employees are also highly involved in local affairs in the county, Robinson said. “They’ve contributed to many different good causes. If there’s some big event going on, most of the time we can count on them to be a willing partner,” Robinson said. “We appreciate the willingness of the plant to help — to be good neighbors, and for their willingness to contribute.”

The county’s tax base has grown substantially in recent years, largely due to increased oil and gas activity, Robinson said. “In addition, the oil and gas provides through the royalties. Many residents get a significant amount of income every year,” he said.

NGL are separated from “wet” natural gas

Four Injured in Explosion & Fire at MarkWest Gas Processing Complex in Southwest PA

Duane Nichols — Sat, 15 Dec 2018 08:10:13 +0000

MarkWest isolates Ethane, Propane and Butanes from “Wet” Natural Gas

Four injured, one critically, in explosion at MarkWest processing plant in Washington County, PA

From an Article by Pittsburgh Post Gazette, December 14, 2018

Four people remain hospitalized, one in critical condition, after an explosion at a Washington County gas processing plant Thursday night.

The explosion involved two storage tanks at the MarkWest Energy facility at 800 Western Ave., in Houston, Pa. It was reported at 6:03 p.m. and the fire brought under control within an hour, according to county emergency officials.

All of the injured workers suffered burns. Two were flown to UPMC Mercy, including one person who was in critical condition Friday morning, officials said. The other two injured were flown to West Penn Hospital.

Nine fire departments and three EMS crews responded, as did the county’s hazmat unit. No homes were evacuated.

A MarkWest official said in a statement that the explosion occurred “near two temporary tanks that were on-site for routine maintenance, resulting in a fire.”

“Although the processing plant was not involved in the incident, it was shut down as a precaution and at this time there are no off-site impacts,” the statement read. “Agency notifications have been made and an investigation into the cause of this event is underway. Our prayers are with our injured colleagues and their families.”

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From WTAE Action 4 News:

The Marathon Petroleum Corporation issued the following statement:

“At approximately 6 p.m. local time, the MarkWest processing plant in Houston, Pennsylvania, experienced an incident near two temporary tanks that were on-site for routine maintenance, resulting in a fire. There were injuries and four individuals have been transported to area hospitals. Local fire departments responded and the fire has been extinguished. The processing plant has been shut down as a precaution and at this time there were no off-site impacts. Agency notifications have been made and an investigation into the cause of this event is underway. Our prayers are with our injured colleagues and their families.”

A spokesperson for the PA Department of Environmental Protection told Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 a team did respond to the site. Crews investigated and determined chemicals from the foam used by firefighters to put out the fire did not leak into any nearby water supply.

The PA-DEP said the company has until January 15 to submit a report detailing the incident.

Accident Kills Construction Worker at Marcus Hook Complex on Delaware River

Duane Nichols — Fri, 03 Apr 2015 13:35:57 +0000

NGL Pipelines from OH, WV & SW-PA to East

Construction Worker Killed for New Natural Gas Processing Facility at Marcus Hook, PA

From an Article by Jamison Cocklin, Natural Gas Intelligence, April 1, 2015

Sunoco Logistics Partners LP confirmed that a contract employee was killed on Monday during work to convert the Marcus Hook industrial complex near Philadelphia into a natural gas liquids (NGL) terminal.

Spokesman Joe McGinn said the contractor, whose name was not released, died in an incident at about 2:30 p.m. EST Monday. The worker reportedly died of blunt force trauma after a large pylon fell. No other injuries were reported.

A U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) representative said federal officials are investigating. OSHA said the contractor worked for Los Angeles-based engineering and construction services firm AECOM, which has been cited for several OSHA violations in the past, according to agency records.

“The worker was struck by a steel pile during pile-driving operations,” said OSHA spokeswoman Joanna Hawkins. She added that the federal investigation could take up to six months to complete.

“No words can express the sorrow and pain that come when such a tragic event happens,” Sunoco stated. “Our deepest sympathies go out to the family and friends of the individual who died. They have suffered a devastating loss.”

Sunoco is converting the former oil refinery on the Delaware River into a terminal to store, export, process and distribute NGLs. (The Sunoco Mariner pipeline system which crosses southern Pennsylvania is being upgraded and repurposed to transport NGLs from southwestern PA, northern WV and eastern OH to the Marcus Hook facility.)

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No injuries in tank fire at well pad in Marshall County

From WTRF News 7, Wheeling, WV April 1, 2015

Moundsville, WV (AP) – An emergency official says no one was injured when a storage tank fire broke out at a drilling well pad in Marshall County.

Marshall County Emergency Management director Tom Hart says the fire was reported around 4:45 a.m. Wednesday at Gastar Exploration’s Armstrong pad near the Wetzel County line. (This is the Mason-Dixon Line, as extended to the Ohio River.)

Hart says four to five tanks were burning when firefighters arrived. The fire was extinguished in about an hour and the well pad wasn’t damaged.

Hart didn’t know what the tanks contained.

MarkWest Energy to Expand Sherwood Processing Complex in Doddridge County

Duane Nichols — Sat, 09 Nov 2013 12:27:49 +0000

MarkWest Energy Partners Signs Agreements with Antero Resources to Expand Sherwood Processing Complex to 1 Bcf/d

Press Release, Mark West Energy Partners, Business Wire, November 7, 2013

NOTE: The Sherwood Processing Complex is visible south of US Route 50 about five miles east of West Union, in Doddridge County, WV.

DENVER — MarkWest Energy Partners, L.P. announced the completion of long-term, fee-based agreements with Antero Resources for the development of an additional cryogenic gas processing plant at the Partnership’s Sherwood complex in Doddridge County, West Virginia.

Under terms of the agreements, MarkWest will construct a fifth 200 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) processing facility that is expected to begin operations in the third quarter of 2014. Upon completion of the new plant, the Sherwood complex will have 1 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of total processing capacity.

Antero is a premier producer in the Northeast and is aggressively developing their acreage position throughout the rich-gas Marcellus. The Sherwood complex currently consists of two plants with 400 MMcf/d of capacity and is operating near full utilization. By the end of this year, MarkWest will bring online a third 200 MMcf/d plant at the complex and is quickly moving forward with the construction of a fourth plant by the second quarter of 2014.

Antero’s natural gas liquids (NGLs) recovered at the Sherwood complex are currently being delivered to MarkWest’s Houston complex in Washington County, Pennsylvania for fractionation and marketing. The Houston complex is the largest fractionation facility in the Northeast and provides extensive logistics services, including storage and the delivery of purity products to market by truck, rail and pipeline.

In addition, the Houston complex offers Marcellus producers the first large-scale de-ethanization facility in the Northeast capable of producing purity ethane for delivery to Mariner West, and ultimately to the ATEX and Mariner East projects.

“We are delighted to further expand our strong relationship with Antero and develop additional processing capacity at the Sherwood complex to support their highly successful drilling program,” said Frank Semple, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of MarkWest. “The ability to offer producers fully integrated midstream services throughout northern West Virginia and southwest Pennsylvania is critical to unlocking the abundant rich-gas reserves of the Marcellus Shale.”

MarkWest Energy Partners, L.P. is a master limited partnership engaged in the gathering, processing and transportation of natural gas; the gathering, transportation, fractionation, storage and marketing of natural gas liquids; and the gathering and transportation of crude oil.

MarkWest has a leading presence in many unconventional gas plays including the Marcellus Shale, Utica Shale, Huron/Berea Shale, Haynesville Shale, Woodford Shale and Granite Wash formation.

SOURCE: MarkWest Energy Partners, L.P.

See also: www.EcoWatch.com and  www.FrackCheckWV.net

GASTAR Sees Large Volumes after Large Investment in Marshall County

Duane Nichols — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 14:55:09 +0000

Marshall County WV

GASTAR PUMPING LARGE QUANTITIES
Company Spent $200 Million In Marshall County

From Article By CASEY JUNKINS, The Wheeling Intelligencer, January 20, 2013

PROCTOR, WV – With large trucks traveling on narrow roads, Michael McCown knows the process of drilling and fracking a $7 million Marcellus Shale well can create plenty of disruption for a community. However, once the process is complete, natural gas producers leave behind a well head cap they refer to as a “Christmas tree.”

“It is pretty quiet out here now. This is what is left when we are finally done with the wells,” said McCown, who serves as vice president-northeast for Houston-based Gastar, while inspecting the well head at one of the company’s producing wells.

During a tour of the site and Gastar’s Marshall County operations, McCown said the company currently is producing about 65 million cubic feet of natural gas per day from West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle. McCown said Gastar now has 47 wells in Marshall and Wetzel counties that are pumping gas or will be soon. “In 2012, our company invested $200 million – all in Marshall County,” he said, noting the amount was probably about $70 million in 2011.

McCown said this year and in future years, his company will probably look to work more in Wetzel County. Gastar also is planning to acquire more acreage, working out of the company’s leasing office on Warden Run Road near Oglebay Park. “All of our gas goes to Williams” Partners, McCown said of the company that operates the Fort Beeler processing facility along U.S. 250 near Cameron, as well as a fractionation facility along the Ohio River south of Moundsville.

“The one thing that is slowing us down a little bit right now is that it is taking Williams a little bit of time to catch up to us with their infrastructure, but we are very confident in them,” McCown said.

Last year, Williams spent $2.5 billion to purchase the Fort Beeler plant and associated processing facilities and pipelines from Caiman Energy. Once Gastar’s gas goes to Williams, the wet natural gas liquids are separated from the dry methane gas so that all products can be sent to market.

“The liquids-rich Marcellus is here. That makes the operations here so valuable,” McCown said. “This is not going to be a short-term rush. We are in this for the long haul.”

Gastar also is reinvesting in infrastructure, as the company repaved Rines Ridge and Burch Ridge in Marshall County, which suffered damage from heavy equipment traveling to drilling sites. Gastar also spent about $5 million to build a private road exclusively for drilling truck traffic, relieving much of the truck traffic from the other roads.

“The terrain is a significant challenge for drilling here in West Virginia,” McCown said. “By having our own road, we are able to keep our trucks off the public roads, which is especially good when school buses need to use those roads.” In another move to help reduce traffic and potential pollution, McCown said Gastar spent $4.5 million to construct facilities to pump fresh water from the Ohio River up to the drilling sites.

“We are continuing to refine our drilling and completion techniques in an effort to achieve maximum efficiency, well economics and estimated ultimate recoveries,” said J. Russell Porter, Gastar president and chief executive officer.

McCown said part of this efficiency effort is to drill as many wells as possible on a single well pad, noting the company plans to have 10 wells on a single pad soon. Though the exact numbers will vary for each well, McCown said one particular well currently being drilled will go roughly 6,000 feet deep before turning to go 5,000 more feet horizontally. Slightly different equipment is used to drill the vertical and horizontal portions of the well.

“We are realizing improving internal rates of return in our Marcellus (Shale) program from increased yields of high-value liquids the further west that we develop the play, combined with lower drilling and completion costs and shorter drilling times. We are also seeing increasing reserves per well and declining total well costs,” added Porter.

While McCown sees a prosperous future in Gastar’s Marcellus activity, he said the potential of increased scrutiny from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency could curtail operations.

“We feel that West Virginia’s (Department of Environmental Protection) is a fair and capable regulatory agency,” McCown said. “And as an industry, we are finding ways to be more environmentally friendly every day.”

NPR: ‘Close Encounters’ With Gas Well Pollution

Duane Nichols — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:21:33 +0000

: Garfield County, Colorado

PART 2. NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO SERIES ON SHALE GAS DRILLING & FRACKING.

Here is a condensed version of the NPR report:

Living in the middle of a natural gas boom can be pretty unsettling. The area around the town of Silt, Colo., used to be the kind of sleepy rural place where the tweet of birds was the most you would hear. Now it’s hard to make out the birds because of the rumbling of natural gas drilling rigs. The land here is steep cliffs and valleys. But bare splotches of earth called well pads are all over the place.

What’s In Those Fumes?

Nearly a decade ago, Garfield County in Colorado started trying to tackle that question, and was chugging ahead of the whole country in pursuit of scientific truth. Local politician Tresi Houpt was the engine pushing that effort.

As she started to campaign to be a Garfield County commissioner, she came down from her home on a ski mountain to meet people in ranches, rural neighborhoods with the big blue skies and clear starry nights. She couldn’t believe what she saw: drill rigs right outside homes, armadas of diesel-spewing trucks, fumes wafting from equipment called compressors and condensate tanks. In Colorado, you can have a drill rig 150 feet from homes.

In 2002, Houpt won her election. And one of the first things she wanted to know was: Did scientists have any answers for what was in the air near wells?

Houpt and the other commissioners agreed to start spending some of the county’s gas royalties to try to get answers. They brought in Jim Rada to create an environmental health office. “There are pipelines, there are storage yards, compressor stations, gas plants,” he says, as we drive along in his hybrid SUV past thousands of sources of air pollution. Diesel exhaust spews from trucks and drilling rigs. Methane, chemicals that make ozone, and fumes that contain cancer-causing benzene leak from wells and storage tanks.

Rada figured it would be impossible to track all this pollution, so back in 2005, he set up monitors in towns where most of the people lived. Gadgets on the roof monitor soot, smog and volatile organic compounds, known as VOCs. Years of data from these and other monitors around the county have shown that the industry is putting a lot more chemicals into the air that create smog. But levels of smog and other air pollutants still meet EPA health standards.

In 2008, he got permission from companies to put air sampling canisters around eight wells that were being drilled. Then, for 24 hours, those canisters captured the chemicals that were coming off the wells. He found very large amounts of chemicals. Some of them, like benzene, can cause cancer. Others, like xylenes, can irritate eyes and lungs.

Rada’s air monitoring work was rare enough that it was getting attention at some higher levels. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Colorado’s state public health agency were analyzing his data for answers.

But they didn’t really find any. For instance, Rada’s eight-well test was just a pilot study. He didn’t test the air long enough or at enough places to know how much chemicals people were really being exposed to.

At that point, Rada says the job got too big for him. This was 2009. Nearly 3,000 wells had gone in the year before. The county needed help. And its next move turned out to have some pretty painful consequences.

Rada called in the Colorado School of Public Health to examine whether lots of new drilling within a neighborhood might hurt people’s health. To make their conclusions, the researchers were supposed to use existing studies, such as the county’s monitoring data, and whatever other science they could find. A draft assessment by the school predicted small increases in risks of cancer, headaches and lung ailments.

People who live near gas wells held up the researchers’ work to attack the industry in lawsuits and in the media. And gas companies fought back. “Both sides were fighting,” recalls John Martin, a longtime county commissioner. “They wanted to use this document in both arguments — that it didn’t hurt anything and that it killed everyone.”

In May of last year, the commissioners gathered for a meeting and voted to end a contract with the Colorado School of Public Health. Tresi Houpt, who had lost her re-election and wasn’t part of the vote, saw her years of work unraveling. All that momentum the county had built up came to a screeching halt.

So, 10 years have passed since Houpt first drove around her county, hearing complaints about air pollution and the gas industry. And Garfield County’s 800 gas wells have grown to more than 8,000. People who live near wells — whether they’re in Texas, Pennsylvania or Utah — still don’t know what they’re breathing.

Houpt believes Garfield County’s saga shows how politics, industry pressure, technical challenges and the slow pace of science have blocked the search for answers — not just for her community, but for the whole country.

US DOE Task Force Recommends Air Testing at Shale Gas Well Pads

Duane Nichols — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 19:38:04 +0000

The Shale Gas Task Force of the U.S. Department of Energy released recommendations on Thursday regarding the need for monitoring of air emissions at gas well development operations. Emissions data should be collected by drillers before government regulations are put in place to require it. Field studies on possible methane migration from gas wells to water reservoirs is to be examined. Both the Marcellus and the Eagle Ford shale formation in Texas are possible testing grounds for systems that would search for air pollutants, according to the recommendation report.

. . .

The first Task Force report, released in August, said natural gas companies should be required to disclose all chemicals used in the fracking process. This is also included in this most recent report, and calls for the elimination of toxic diesel fuel in fracking fluids.

. . .

The U.S. government should create a website that explains shale gas operations, and interagency efforts should immediately begin analyzing shale drilling’s greenhouse gas footprint, according to the report. The report cites the Marcellus Shale Coalition, a pro-industry lobbying group based in Canonsburg, as an effective regional approach to sharing best practices.

. . .

The need also exists to aggregate the air pollution impacts of well pads, gathering pipelines, compressor stations and mid-stream gas processing when these affect the same geographic region, according to GASP, the Group Against Smog and Pollution in Pittsburgh.

Where are the Gas Jobs? More Drilling Rigs, Pipelines and Separation Plants Promise New Jobs

Duane Nichols — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 02:46:14 +0000

Chesapeake has been under the eye of Senator Joe Manchin and others; but, claims of over 700 local workers provides few clues about the number of local workers in the future. Are qualified local workers hard to find, or does it depend upon what qualifications are required?

Drilling rigs and fracking crews are still in demand, pipeline projects for gathering lines and transmission lines continue to be developed, and new gas separation/processing plants are under construction. Of these, the gas processing plants offer the greatest long-term employment outlook, giving a working crew of perhaps 55 plant employees jobs for decades. These processing plants can separate ethane, propane, butanes and natural gasoline from the “wet” gas of the local Marcellus wells.

The Hastings plant of Dominion in Wetzel County has operated for decades, currently producing some 560,000 gallons per day of natural gas liquids. Caiman Energy has just completed one of three plants at Ft. Beeler in Marshall County. And, Dominion has just announced a new plant for the Natrium site north of New Martinsville on the Ohio River to process 300 million cubic feet of “wet” gas per day. The surge in employment during the drilling and construction phases will likely moderate to a few hundred jobs in operations, and this is dependent upon the price of natural gas and the by-product natural gas liquids.