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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plastic pollution of micron size has spread throughout our lives

From a Video Presentation by Dr. Sherri Mason, Penn State — Erie Campus, March 1, 2021

Plastic pollution in the world’s oceans has been publicized widely; we’ve heard about the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” Lesser known is the prevalence of microplastics in freshwater systems, which are conduits from land to the sea.

Dr. Sherri Mason, cutting-edge plastic pollution researcher and Sustainability Coordinator at Penn State Erie, will present an overview of what plastic is, its proliferation in our society, and its emergence as one of the most prominent environmental pollutants.

Dr. Sherri A. Mason completed her doctorate in Chemistry at the University of Montana as a NASA Earth System Science scholar. Her research group is among the first to study the prevalence and impact of plastic pollution within freshwater ecosystems. Among her many accolades Dr. Mason earned the Heinz Award in Public Policy in 2018.

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See also: Microplastics: An emerging threat to the Chesapeake Bay, David Alan, VRBO News Now, April 8, 2021

“You can see everything from water bottles to plastic bags,” said Chris Moore with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. We found a sneaker, dozens of construction hard hats, even a traffic drum. Every bit of trash we saw as we walked the shoreline was the ugly side of our reliance on plastics. The bigger problem is some of these larger plastic objects will break down here in the hot sun. Some of the trash will end up back in the bay to be torn apart by tides, forming microplastics.

The tiny specks of plastic — some invisible to the naked eye — pose a significant risk to a host of juvenile finfish found in the Chesapeake Bay. There are concerns that oysters and clams may be trying to filter microplastics and cannot. Microplastic contamination is not just a concern for the environment. A 2016 study showed the commercial seafood industry in Virginia and Maryland contributed $1.4 billion in sales and 30,000 jobs to the local economy.

Recycling of plastics now problematic

From an Article by Renzo Pipoli, Reuters Events, October 27, 2020

The Canadian federal government announced in October plans to ban six very commonly used single-use plastic items by the end of 2021 to tackle a pollution problem that became more pressing after China banned plastic waste imports in 2018.

Canada’s Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said the ban is part of a broader plan to reach zero plastic waste within a decade that will also include making plastic producers responsible for waste. Only plastics considered both harmful to the environment and costly to recycle were listed.

The coming ban on bags and six-pack rings will affect polyethylene while the one on straws will impact polypropylene (PP). Bans on plastic cutlery and drink stirrers will affect both PP and polystyrene. Bans on plastic food containers will hit expanded polystyrene.

The Canadian government has asked for feedback by December 9th. The ban will not come into effect until the end of 2021.

The planned bans in Canada are part of an international growing tendency, said Ashish Chitalia, Wood Mackenzie’s research director. “That is a trend that we’re seeing since 2018 as it all started when China banned the imports of plastic waste, and that has encouraged exporters of plastic waste, like North America, Europe, to improve their policies and reduce plastic waste at the source,” Chitalia said.

Industry to be responsible for plastic waste collection

The China ban, “along with social pressure to tackle the plastic waste in the environment and landfills,” are encouraging regulators to consider stemming the plastic waste at the source,” Chitalia added.

Wilkinson said single-use plastics easier to collect and recycle were not included.“The focus is on plastics that are particularly problematic, and that is particularly things like expandable polystyrene or Styrofoam,” he said. For example, drink containers and lids were not included, Wilkinson added on an Oct. 7 interview with CTV News.

“The broader part of this plan is to make producers and vendors responsible for the collection and recycling, to set requirements in terms of the amount of product that has to be recycled, to require recycled content standards,” he said.

There is an urgent need in Canada to tackle the plastic waste problem, he explained. “Last year 29,000 tonnes of plastic ended up in our environment. Most of it in our lakes, our rivers, and our ocean,” he said.

Other plans include incentives to consider recyclability in product design, and mandating minimum recycled components in manufacturing.

“When we throw away plastics that don’t get recycled we waste C$8 billion worth of material every year so there’s an opportunity to make sure we’re making good value and good use of resources,” Wilkinson said.

Canadian plastic waste exports under study

According to a 2019 report by Greenpeace about Canadian waste exports following China’s import ban in the preceding year, Canadian plastic waste exporters have struggled to find destinations.

In 2015 Canada exported to China, including Hong Kong, 100,618 tonnes of plastic waste, according to Greenpeace. Then came China’s January 2018 ban on 24 materials, including eight plastics. Since the ban, waste exporters have diverted shipping to countries including Malaysia, Taiwan and several others, but divided in smaller volumes, according to Greenpeace.

Results of a Greenpeace investigation of waste plastic found in unlicensed facilities in Malaysia detected Canadian labels in the plastic waste found there, the report said. Greenpeace called on the Canadian government to meet obligations under the Basel convention on the control of trans-boundary movements of hazardous wastes and their disposal.

U.S. companies warn against plastics ban

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent on Sept. 21 a letter to Mary Ng, Canada’s minister of international trade, undersigned by over 50 associations representing plastics from adhesives to vinyl, to warn that the ban undermines free-trade agreements.

“The proposed ban on any product containing plastic and manufactured in the U.S. clearly meets the definition of a non-tariff barrier,” the letter said. A ban “would have a disproportionate trade impact, given the $12.1 billion of manufactured plastic that enters Canada from the United States every year,” it added.

“That is exclusive of other products (like cars, medical supplies and devices, and information technology products) that contain plastic components or goods that require plastic to prevent contamination, such as food,” it added. “Such a precedent would create further incentives to ban trade by other governments, which could impact over $10 billion in Canadian exports of plastics and plastic products,” it added.

Industry concerned about ‘toxic’ designation

Both the U.S. and Canadian plastic industries object to the use of the word ‘toxic’ to describe plastics. “Consumers would assume that every day and essential products that contain plastic are now toxic,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce letter said.

The Chemistry Industry Association of Canada (CIAC) on Oct. 7 shared the U.S. concern about the designation of plastics as ‘toxic’ and about using the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA) to regulate plastic disposal.

Wilkinson has said that if the issue around the word ‘toxic’ is one of nomenclature, the government is open to discussions but will not renounce efforts to protect the environment.

The CIAC has also shown concern about increased carbon taxation.

Canadian industry warns against ‘premature’ decisions

The Canadian government should not take “premature” decisions, the CIAC added.

Canada’s plastics producers are improving design for recycle and reuse models; and investing in recycling, it said. The industry’s own goals aim for products becoming fully recyclable or recoverable by 2030, while all plastic should be reused, recycled or recovered by 2040.

Programs to eliminate plastic pellets release from industry operations into rivers and oceans will be in place by 2022.

Canada’s plastics manufacturers add C$28 billion to the economy annually and employ 93,000 Canadians, it said. According to Wood Mackenzie’s Chitalia, the ban “gives an opportunity for Canadian producers of bioplastics to penetrate single-use plastics markets.”

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See also: Plastic Pollution Coalition calls out retailers ….

Calling on AMAZON: “Ditch Single-Use Plastic Packaging”

It’s time to stop plastics pollution everywhere

Food & Water Watch analysis of employment

From an Article by Alison Grass, Pittsburgh Tribune Review, October 16, 2020

The road to the White House once again runs through Pennsylvania, which explains the campaign photo ops and nonstop TV ads. It also means we’ll be treated to a lot of claims about fracking. Unfortunately, much of what we’re hearing about drilling is not rooted in the facts.

The stories that the Trump campaign and the fracking industry tell are straightforward: Fracking equals jobs, and lots of them. Trump tells his supporters that 600,000 (or occasionally even 900,000) fracking jobs in Pennsylvania are at risk due to a ban on drilling. That is nowhere near the truth — the real number is under 30,000 — and Joe Biden does not support a fracking ban in the first place.

The Trump team makes the same kinds of boasts about the Shell petrochemical cracker plant going up in Beaver County, which has become a regular campaign backdrop. In a sense, this is perfectly fitting; that facility, and the massive public subsidies that have been wasted on it, are emblematic of Trump’s distorted fossil fuel agenda. The public will eventually shell out $1.6 billion — in the form of corporate tax credits — to help subsidize the $6 billion facility, which will convert fracked gas byproducts into plastics. This is, in Trump’s view, a huge success story; he even once bizarrely claimed credit for the plant’s existence.

But the Shell saga is not a success, it’s a cautionary tale. Contrary to the boasts of petrochemical backers, the plant was mostly built with imported materials and out-of-state workers. Instead of providing for thousands of local, permanent jobs, it will create about 600. And these massive corporate giveaways don’t create jobs — they serve to widen the inequality gap.

The fossil-fuel industry and its political allies are telling us the same story we’ve always heard: If you want the jobs, you have to put up with living with the air and water pollution. But new research from Food & Water Watch shows that “choice” is false. Our new analysis — “Cracked: The Case For Green Jobs Over Petrochemicals In Pennsylvania” — shows that a similar level of investment in wind and solar manufacturing would create as many as 16,000 permanent jobs.

But let’s be real: Subsidies and tax breaks alone are unlikely to attract manufacturers. The most effective way to ensure the transition to a green economy is through a large-scale buildout of publicly owned renewable electricity. This should include a comprehensive, New Deal-scale green public works program that guarantees employment for fossil-fuel workers and prioritizes American-made renewable energy and energy-efficient equipment, materials and appliances.

The fact that clean energy manufacturing provides a much more serious jobs boom should move Pennsylvania’s political leaders to pursue policies to create an economy that works for everyone. Unfortunately, state lawmakers are still banking on fossil fuels and petrochemicals.

Right now, the entire “debate” around fracking in Pennsylvania is marred by outlandish exaggerations and a willful blindness to the realities of the fossil-fuel business. As national media outlets pontificate about what the presidential candidates will do to “protect” fracking jobs, the industry is in the midst of a devastating collapse. While the campaign rhetoric spins fantasies about hundreds of thousands of good jobs, in the real world fracking jobs are disappearing and companies are going bankrupt.

The Shell cracker plant does not represent the kind of future that will truly benefit all Pennsylvanians. Instead of spending billions of dollars to create a few hundred jobs — and unknown quantities of air and plastic pollution — the state should make serious investments in wind and solar manufacturing, which will create far more stable, long-term jobs at a fraction of the cost.

>> Alison Grass is research director at the national advocacy group Food & Water Watch.

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FACT CHECKER: Trump campaign promotes false claim that Biden would end fracking – The Washington Post, October 7, 2020

More than six months after former vice president Joe Biden became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, the Trump campaign still acts as if it is running against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Plastics production generates greenhouse gases and ...

From Peter Dykstra, Environmental Health News, September 27, 2020

While climate change remains environmental issue #1, the worries over plastic in our water, soil, food, and bodies continue to grow.

It’s hard to ignore the looming mountain of plastics problems. Plastic pollution has been hiding in plain sight as the next eco-calamity for decades. With climate change teed up as the major global environmental challenge, let’s take stock of another modern crisis.

Nurdle alert! My first encounter with nurdles was on what should have been a pristine Costa Rican beach in 1986. The lentil-sized, grayish pellets spread the sands for miles, along with a stunning number of shoes. I never figured out the source of the shoe spill, but nurdles eventually became a headline-maker in the oceans world.

Nurdles are resulting in many forms of pollution

One example: in 2017, 600 volunteers scoured 279 U.K. beaches, reporting that two-thirds of them were “littered” with nurdles.

Let’s talk recycling. For years, much of what we think of as recycled plastic was collected in communities and eventually shipped to Asia. In 2018, the People’s Republic of China formally announced that they’d officially had it. Imports of recyclable plastic had choked China’s landfills beyond reason. Early, rudimentary successes with recycled goods had run their course. But we reached Peak Flip-Flop, and China’s National Sword initiative slammed the door, barring plastic waste imports from the U.S. and about two dozen industrialized nations.

Most of our plastic goes to the landfill. In 1960 the U.S. sent roughly 390 tons of plastic waste to landfills, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In 2017, the most recent year there is data for, that number shot to 26,820 tons, which is about nine times more than was recycled. Yikes.

Part of this is driven by the market to make plastics: the U.S. fracking boom caused an abundance of cheap natural gas and oil. By mid-2019, it was cheaper to make new plastic than it was to recycle the old stuff.

Here are some other quick facts to put a damper on your day:

§ >> In 2018, Norwegian researchers reported an enormous rise of plastic particles found in Arctic wildlife as well as similar increases of plastic particles in melting Arctic sea ice.

§ >> A 2019 Scripps study of sediments in California’s Santa Barbara Basin shows deposits of plastic have doubled every 15 years since the end of World War II.

§ >> Micro-plastics are of increasing concern in farm soils, including those placed there intentionally as seed coatings, artificial mulch, and more. Yes, intentionally.

In June of this year, a Utah State University researcher reported finding at least 1,000 tons of microplastics in 11 remote locations in the American West, including Grand Canyon National Park and Joshua Tree National Monument. The researcher suggested that “plastic deposition” in such remote places could mean we’re bathing in it, even when we’re miles from water.

We know the problem has been building for years, and the paths to solutions are often blocked by the fossil fuel industry, which sees salvation in plastics production as its other marquee products fade.

While we all rightly call for leaders to address, and in some cases just acknowledge, the climate crisis, let’s also remember to skip the straws and question those that keep pumping plastic out into our planet.

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See also: New Report On Plastics & Climate — The Hidden Costs Of A Plastic Planet, Cynthia Shahan, May 18, 2019

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.”

We are eating a nominal 5 grams of plastics each and every week, uugghh!

From an Article by Kevin Loria, Consumer Reports, April 30, 2020

The Menace of Microplastics

Any plastic item—bag or bottle, toy or chair—starts to come apart with use and time, breaking down into tinier and tinier fragments. Most of the plastic produced hasn’t been recycled (see “What’s Gone Wrong With Recycling”). But it’s not just old plastic that has disintegrated into particles that make their way into lakes, rivers, and oceans. Cracking open a brand-new plastic bottle or tearing a wrapper off a sandwich releases fragments of plastic that we might end up ingesting. Household dust can be full of microplastics—and it’s possible that you might kick this up into the air from your carpet and breathe it in. Plastic fibers even wash off clothes into our water supplies.

Fragments of plastic smaller than 5 millimeters in length are known as “microplastics,” and scientists have started to refer to even more microscopic fragments—generally smaller than 1,000 nanometers—as “nanoplastics.” In a 2019 report, the World Health Organization found that we’ve unknowingly ingested microplastics for decades without clear negative consequences, saying that research into potential health effects is needed. While there’s much we don’t yet know, we have learned that micro- and nanoplastics are everywhere. Snow in the Arctic carries substantial amounts of microplastic, according to a 2019 study in the journal Science Advances, and even more has been detected in the Alps. Microplastics can even be found in the seemingly pristine sand of Hawaiian beaches.

Given this, researchers are concerned that these plastics can make their way into the tissues of our bodies, according to Linda Birnbaum, Ph.D., the recently retired director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the National Toxicology Program. “Nanoplastics can easily cross all kinds of barriers, whether it’s the blood-brain barrier or the placental barrier, and get into our tissues,” Birnbaum has said. Breathing in nanoplastics might introduce them into our cardiovascular system and bloodstream, for example.

It’s also possible that nanoplastic particles might create a systemic inflammatory response, according to Phoebe Stapleton, Ph.D., an assistant professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. Her research has previously shown that inhaled metal particles can harm the cardiovascular health of a developing fetus. And her animal research has also confirmed that when a mother breathes in nanoplastics, the particles can be found in many places inside the fetus. “We know that after exposure, the plastic particles are everywhere we look,” Stapleton says. “We don’t know yet what those particles are doing once they’re deposited there.” Other researchers, like Myers at Environmental Health Sciences, are concerned that nanoplastics could possibly release harmful chemicals (such as BPA) into our bodies.

Another area of inquiry focuses on the fact that microplastics act like magnets for additional toxins, picking up pollutants such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chemicals now banned from manufacture in the U.S. but still present in the environment. According to Linda Birnbaum, formerly at the NIEHS, if we later ingest or inhale contaminated microplastics, they may release these substances they’ve picked up into our blood or organs, along with whatever chemicals are also in the plastic itself.

See my finger, see these tiny plastics — some are very much smaller still ...

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See also: Environmental toxicologist wants to understand how microplastics affect human health,
Stephanie Wright, Chemical & Engineering News, Volume 98, Issue 15, April 19, 2020

We are studying air particles that are a so-called health-relevant size that can enter the central and distal parts of the human lung. We are also investigating whether we can detect microplastics in human lung tissue and whether we can find any links to health outcomes.

Additionally, we are doing some in vitro studies to examine the toxicology of these particles. The big question is the relative importance of microplastics. Humans are obviously exposed to thousands, if not hundreds of thousands or millions, of particles in a cubic meter of air, so it’s vital to understand the relative proportion of microplastics within those particles and their relative potency.

Plastic credit cards represent 5 grams of pollutants

From the Cover Story of Consumer Reports Magazine, Volume 85, Number 6, June 2020, pp. 26 – 35.

The first company to ever sell fully synthetic plastic—the Bakelite Corp., established in 1922—advertised it as “The Material of a Thousand Uses.”

It had that right: Today, beyond the plates we eat from, the straws we drink through, the furniture we sit on, and the toys our kids play with, there is plastic in the clothes we wear, in the cars we drive, even in the lifesaving medical equipment in our hospitals. And—more than anywhere else—plastic is in our packaging, encasing everything from laundry detergent to prescription pills, from the food we eat to the beverages we drink.

In fact, the world has produced more than 10 billion tons of the stuff, mostly since the 1950s, and we just keep making more. In 2018, manufacturers created almost 400 million tons of new plastic, and production is expected to almost quadruple by 2050. The vast majority of that plastic eventually ends up piled up around the planet. Some of it may last for hundreds of years, and when it does break down, it can become small particles of plastic—microplastics—that spread farther across the planet, entering our water and food supply.

Why is this a problem? After all, manufacturers and certain regulatory agencies have long assured us that plastics are safe for human health. “In the U.S., we have a robust system that looks at materials that are in contact with food, and that includes plastics, managed by the [Food and Drug Administration],” says Karyn Schmidt, senior director of regulatory and technical affairs at the American Chemistry Council, an industry group that represents plastics and chemical manufacturers. “Consumers should feel very confident using any plastic coming into contact with food that they would buy in a grocery store.”

MORE ON ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH

And yet there’s growing concern. It’s not just the photos of whales, albatrosses, and sea turtles washing ashore, stomachs clogged with the stuff, or the stories about swirling ocean vortexes collecting litter from around the globe—although these are sobering. Reliable research now shows that tiny bits of plastic are in our food, drinking water, the air we breathe, and, yes, inside our bodies.

“This credit card here, this is how much plastic you are consuming every week,” Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., holding up a Visa card, said when announcing legislation meant to reduce plastic pollution this past February. He was referencing a preliminary estimate by some scientists that the plastic the average person may be eating and drinking totals as much as 5 grams per week. One research review published in 2019 calculated that the average American eats, drinks, and breathes in more than 74,000 microplastic particles every year.

Some scientists say it’s likely that ingesting these tiny bits of plastic could expose us to harmful chemicals. “There cannot be no effect,” says Pete Myers, Ph.D., founder and chief scientist of the nonprofit Environmental Health Sciences and an adjunct professor of chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

“People have this idea that plastic is clean,” a sterile object that doesn’t come apart, says Sherri Mason, Ph.D., sustainability coordinator at Penn State Behrend in Erie, Pa., and a chemist who has studied the presence of plastic in tap water, beer, sea salt, and bottled water.

But, in fact, the raw materials of plastic are created from fossil fuels including oil and natural gas. And thousands of chemicals, depending on the product, are used to make it harder, softer, or more flexible. These chemicals include bisphenols, such as bisphenol A (BPA), and phthalates, which can flow or leach into the foods touched by plastic, especially when that plastic is warmed.

“It’s ironic that as public attention to this issue is really growing, global plastic production is increasing,” says Judith Enck, a former regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, now a visiting professor at Bennington College in Vermont and president of Beyond Plastics, a nonprofit focused on ending plastics pollution. And as more plastic is produced and discarded, contaminating our water, food, and air, exposure levels for the average person will continue to rise.

Shopping bags disintegrate into microplastics, potentially entering our food supply and, eventually, our bodies. (To be continued.)

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See also: Scientists Discover Highest Concentration of Deep-Sea Microplastics to Date, Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch.com, May 01, 2020

Scientists have discovered the highest concentration of microplastics ever recorded on the seafloor—1.9 million pieces in one square meter (approximately 11 square feet) of the Mediterranean.

But the finding, published in Science on Thursday, suggests a much broader problem as deep-sea currents carry plastics to microplastic “hotspots” that may well also be deep-sea ecosystems rich in biodiversity. For study coauthor professor Elda Miramontes of the University of Bremen, Germany, the results are alarming.