Frack Check WV » GASP

Even Large Modern Ethane Cracker Facilities Cause Pollution & GHGs

Duane Nichols — Tue, 04 Jul 2023 21:34:34 +0000

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

Shell Plastics Plant in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, Has Been Polluting the Environment

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.

SCAPE Studio in Pittsburgh presents “Petrochemical America”

Duane Nichols — Sun, 24 Sep 2017 10:04:25 +0000

Also: Beaver Station on Oct. 16 - 20, 2017

Petrochemical America: From Cancer Alley to Toxic Valley

Described by Group Against Smog & Pollution (GASP), Newsletter, September 23, 2017

Join the growing regional conversation on Wednesday, September 27 at 5 p.m. at an Opening Night Cocktail Reception for the art exhibit “Petrochemical America, from Cancer Alley to Toxic Valley.”

The exhibit was inspired by the book “Petrochemical America” by Richard Misrach and Kate Orff (New York: Aperture, 2012), which tells the story of the degradation of the Louisiana landscape and the people who live there.

This presentation features drawings from the book by landscape architect Kate Orff and SCAPE Studio alongside photography from the Photographers of the Marcellus Shale Documentary Project, audio recorded by Public Herald, and a selection of documentary films. It relates a unique narrative of the people who live in the midst of a growing web of fracking well pads, pipelines, cryogenic plants and, soon, petrochemical plants. This show is curated by Sophie Riedel in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab.

On September 27, keynote speaker Wilma Subra will share stories and photographs about the people she has served in Cancer Alley and beyond. A chemist and scientist, she has devoted the last 30 years to helping defend local communities and workers against the oil and gas industries. Described as the “Rachel Carson of Louisiana,” she is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellow “Genius Award,” recognized for helping ordinary citizens understand, cope with, and address environmental issues that come with the growth of the petrochemical industry.

Those seeking knowledge about the petrochemical industry and the impact it will have on the environment and people’s health will find this exhibit illuminating. RSVPs are required.

Learn more about this event and more by visiting the Eventbrite page.

Wednesday, September 27, Time: 5 to 8 p.m.
SPACE Gallery
812 Liberty Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15222

Political Nonsense is Making Us Gasp — It May Get Worse

Duane Nichols — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 09:36:21 +0000

Support GASP & Mon Valley Clean Air Coalition

Trump and Pruitt Will Make America Gasp Again

From an Article by Paul Krugman, New York Times, December 9, 2016

Many people voted for Donald Trump because they believed his promises that he would restore what they imagine were the good old days — the days when America had lots of traditional jobs mining coal and producing manufactured goods. They’re going to be deeply disappointed: The shift away from blue-collar work is mainly about technological change, not globalization, and no amount of tweets and tax breaks will bring those jobs back.

But in other ways Mr. Trump can indeed restore the world of the 1970s. He can, for example, bring us back to the days when, all too often, the air wasn’t safe to breathe. And he’s made a good start by selecting Scott Pruitt, a harsh foe of pollution regulation, to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Make America gasp again!

Much of the commentary on the Pruitt appointment has focused on his denial of climate science and on the high likelihood that the incoming administration will undo the substantial progress President Obama was beginning to make against climate change. And that is, in the long run, the big story.

After all, climate change is an existential threat in a way local pollution isn’t, and the installation of the Trump team in power may mean that we have lost our last, best chance for a cooperative international effort to contain that threat.

Everyone who contributed to this outcome — very much, if I may say, including the journalists who elevated the fundamentally trivial issue of Hillary Clinton’s emails into the dominant theme of campaign reporting — bears part of the responsibility for what may end up being a civilization-ending event. No, that’s not hyperbole.

But climate change is a slow-building, largely invisible threat, hard to explain or demonstrate to the general public — which is one reason lavishly funded climate deniers have been so successful at obfuscating the issue. So it’s worth pointing out that most environmental regulation involves much more obvious, immediate, sometimes deadly threats. And much of that regulation may well be headed for oblivion.

Think about what America was like in 1970, the year the E.P.A. was founded. It was still an industrial nation, with roughly a quarter of the work force employed in manufacturing, often at relatively high wages, in large part because of a still-strong union movement. (Funny how Trumpist pledges to bring back the good old days never mention that part.)

It was also, however, a very polluted country. Choking smog was quite common in major cities; in the Los Angeles area, extreme pollution alerts, sometimes accompanied by warnings that even healthy adults should stay indoors and move as little as possible, were fairly common.

It’s far better now — not perfect, but much better. These days, to experience the kind of pollution crisis that used to be all too frequent in Los Angeles or Houston, you have to go to places like Beijing or New Delhi. And the improvement in air quality has had clear, measurable benefits. For example, we’re seeing significant improvements in lung function among children in the Los Angeles area, clearly tied to reduced pollution.

The key point is that better air didn’t happen by accident: It was a direct result of regulation — regulation that was bitterly opposed at every step by special interests that attacked the scientific evidence of harm from pollution, meanwhile insisting that limiting their emissions would kill jobs.

These special interests were, as you might guess, wrong about everything. The health benefits of cleaner air are overwhelmingly clear. Meanwhile, experience shows that a growing economy is perfectly consistent with an improving environment. In fact, reducing pollution brings large economic benefits once you take into account health care costs and the effects of lower pollution on productivity.

Meanwhile, claims of huge business costs from environmental programs have been wrong time and time again. This may be no surprise when interest groups are trying to maintain their right to pollute. It turns out, however, that even the E.P.A. itself has a history ofoverestimating the costs of its regulations.

So the looming degradation of environmental protection will be a bad thing on every level: bad for the economy as well as bad for our health. But don’t expect rational arguments to that effect to sway the people who will soon be running the government. After all, what’s bad for America can still be good for the likes of the Koch brothers. Besides, my correspondents keep telling me that arguing policy on the basis of facts and figures is arrogant and elitist, so there.

The good news, sort of, is that some of the nasty environmental consequences of Trumpism will probably be visible — literally — quite soon. And when bad air days make a comeback, we’ll know exactly whom to blame.

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GASP, the Group Against Smog & Pollution, was established in 1969 in Pittsburgh and has made incredible progress over the years. Read more here.

State and Federal Agencies Involved in Permitting New Marcellus Gas Pipelines

Duane Nichols — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 14:50:00 +0000

One of the largest pipeline projects of the Marcellus region, a $700 million expansion of Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co.’s “300” pipeline, is already under construction, employing 2,100 surveyors, inspectors and construction workers. It received federal approval last year to lay approximately 127 miles of 30-inch pipeline — along the existing “300” pipeline where possible — through northern Pennsylvania and northern New Jersey, as well as the installation of two new compressor stations and upgrades of seven others.

Other companies are moving forward with gathering and interconnecting pipelines to move the gas from producing well sites. Those gathering pipelines require various federal, state or local permits to cross wetlands, streams and roads, but not federal energy regulators’ approval. Jan Jarrett of the Harrisburg-based environmental group PennFuture, said she is concerned about the impact of the pipeline construction on forests, wetlands and the countless high-quality cold water trout streams that spider-web northern Pennsylvania. Joe Osborne of the Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP) in Pittsburgh said there are concerns about air pollution from the growing number of compressor stations that are sources of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds — that contribute to ground-level ozone and asthma.

At least one new interstate project, the MARC I line proposed by Inergy LP, is getting pushback from some residents and environmental groups in the rural Endless Mountains region of north-central PA. The line, which would travel into New York, would pose the threat of pollution to 111 sensitive streams and water bodies and split 39 miles of undeveloped forest and farm land in an area that supports a robust ecosystem, high quality of life and recreation, the EPA said. But FERC says the pipeline would have “no significant impact” on the environment and recommends that it be allowed to go forward.

Chesapeake Energy is protesting the new rules of the US Army Corps of Engineers in reviewing stream crossings by proposed pipelines claiming that some 128 completed Marcellus wells are being unnecessarily shut off from production. These new permits allow regulators to consider the cumulative surface-water impacts of the projects, which are increasingly spider-webbing to tie new Marcellus wells to interstate pipelines. Such new permits streamline some of the process for stream disturbance evaluations.