Shell Cracker on Ohio River in March 2019 (FracTracker Alliance)

From an Article by Nick Cunningham, Yale 360 Environmental News, 3/21/2019

Once known as the Steel City, Pittsburgh is shedding its polluted past and embracing a rebirth built on health care, education, and technology. But the region’s surging fracking industry is attracting a $6 billion ethane plant and other petrochemical facilities, raising new pollution fears.

Pittsburgh is a city on the upswing, rebounding this century from its rustbelt past by developing more innovative sectors such as health care, education, and technology. Uber is testing its self-driving cars in Pittsburgh. Carnegie Mellon University is home to a world-renowned Robotics Institute. And the city made an aggressive bid for Amazon’s HQ2, which the mayor viewed as key to moving the Steel City beyond its roots in heavy industry.

Progress toward a cleaner, post-industrial future is not linear, however. Although the air in Pittsburgh has dramatically improved from the days when it was one of America’s most polluted cities, it still contains high levels of hazardous pollutants, in large part because of several major steel foundries and coke works still in operation, according to the Clean Air Council. The rise of hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas, now more than a decade old, has exacerbated regional air quality problems. Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, is out of compliance with federal air quality standards on fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) and sulfur dioxide. In 2018, the region barely met the federal ozone standard after falling short in years past.

Now, Pittsburgh and the surrounding area are embracing a new wave of industry tied to the fracking boom in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. Nothing better embodies this surge than a massive, $6 billion ethane cracker currently being built 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh by Shell Chemical Appalachia, a subsidiary of the oil giant Royal Dutch Shell. The facility will process huge quantities of natural gas and natural gas liquids from the prolific Marcellus and Utica shales and turn them into the building blocks of plastic. The plastic pellets produced by “cracking” ethane molecules will then be sold to manufacturers producing consumer and industrial products such as plastic bags, packaging, automotive parts, and furniture.

When it comes online in 2021, Shell’s ethane cracker will also add significantly to air pollution in western Pennsylvania, becoming the region’s largest source of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are harmful gases emitted by solids or liquids, including combusted fossil fuels. The facility will also emit substantial amounts of nitrogen oxide (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2), fine particulate matter, and other hazardous air pollutants, the Clean Air Council says. All of these have been linked to an increased risk of respiratory problems such as asthma, as well as to cardiovascular effects and a heightened risk of cancer.

Environmental groups, along with some local residents, have fought the ethane cracker. But local and state political leaders are almost uniformly supportive of the project, regardless of party affiliation. So are labor leaders and many local citizens, seeing the arrival of Shell’s facility as a pivotal moment in the creation of a new, large-scale industrial sector that could rival the region’s glory days of steel production.

“Employment in western Pennsylvania has never been better,” says Ken Broadbent, business manager at Steamfitters Local 449, noting that construction at Shell’s ethane cracker will eventually provide jobs for 1,500 steamfitters, some of whom will make more than $100,000 a year. “I’ve never seen this many jobs for construction workers in western Pennsylvania, and I’ve been a steamfitter for 45 years. Natural gas is going to be bigger than the steel industry back 30 or 40 years ago. There’s 50 years to 100 years of natural gas in this tri-state region. This thing is not going away.”

Asked if he is concerned about air pollution from the plant, Broadbent acknowledged the threat, but said the economic opportunities are too important. “It concerns everybody — we fish, we hunt, our kids breathe the air like everybody else,” he said. “But we’ve also got to realize that people have got to work for a living, too. If you’re not working, it won’t matter how much pollution you have.”

Construction of the Shell facility is expected to reach its peak this year, with up to 6,000 total workers on site. When operational, the plant will employ 600 people on a permanent basis.

Pennsylvania’s Governor Tom Wolf, a Democrat, has hailed Shell’s ethane cracker as the “biggest private-sector investment in Pennsylvania since World War II” and touted the prospect of a transformation of western Pennsylvania as a fracking-driven energy “hub,” with the cracker just the first in a series of petrochemical projects. Executives and industry analysts refer to Shell’s ethane cracker as an “anchor” project around which new infrastructure would be built — the associated pipelines, compressor stations, gas processing facilities, and a new ethane storage facility.

But this reindustrialization of western Pennsylvania, and the resulting increase in air and water pollution, is of growing concern to some in the region. They note that in recent years the Pittsburgh area has benefitted from a job-creating shift to cleaner economic sectors, driven by major local institutions like the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

“This region for [the last] 30 years started making some really smart decisions — investing in education and health care, letting universities lead the way, letting innovation be the driver, having a much more diversified economy and, especially, climbing up the value chain and getting away from those basic commodities that leave a toxic legacy,” says Matt Mehalik, executive director of the Breathe Project, a local nonprofit working to reduce air pollution.

Although the fracking boom has undeniably created jobs and pumped money into the region, scientists and environmentalists say it is bringing with it polluted wastewater, dirty air, roads crowded with gas industry trucks, and rural areas dotted with noisy and unsightly drilling platforms.

Ted Auch of the FracTracker Alliance, a non-profit that keeps tabs on the health effects of the shale gas industry, notes that it has gone through several phases over the past decade. At the start of each phase, he says, the industry pushed for new investments that justified the next level of intensification. First, the industry needed more pipelines in order to move excess gas out of the region. Then it needed more wells to dispose of fracking wastewater, says Auch. Then the ability to export gas abroad. A year ago, exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) began from a newly constructed terminal on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, moving Marcellus shale gas across the world to Japan.

===== Pittsburgh’s work on combatting climate change through 2030 would be negated by this single Shell plant.=====

Auch says he fears that Shell’s ethane cracker, plus others in the works, may unleash yet another wave of drilling. “So now we’re on like our third or fourth version of reasoning for why [the industry] needs X, Y, and Z,” says Auch.

Auch and others say that at a time when scientists are issuing increasingly stark warnings about the worsening impacts of global warming and the need to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the fracking boom in northern Appalachia, coupled with the construction of related infrastructure and facilities, is moving the region and the U.S. in precisely the wrong direction.

They note that in 2017 the city of Pittsburgh unveiled an ambitious plan to slash greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 (using a 2003 baseline), which would equate to a reduction of 2.1 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. Shell’s ethane cracker, which needs to burn natural gas to create the high temperatures needed to “crack” ethane, is expected to emit 2.2 million tons of greenhouse gases annually. In other words, all of Pittsburgh’s work on combatting climate change through 2030 would be negated by a single plant.

The plant’s critics also maintain that Shell’s ethane cracker represents a significant setback in the region’s long battle to clean up its air. Pittsburgh is ranked in the top 10 nationwide for most polluted cities in terms of year-round particulate matter. Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, is ranked in the top 2 percent nationally in terms of cancer risk from hazardous air pollutants, according to a 2013 study by the Center for Healthy Environments and Communities at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.

Shell refutes the notion that its Pittsburgh-area ethane cracker will adversely affect the health of nearby communities. “Shell takes the health of the community and our staff very seriously,” says Joe Minnitte, a company spokesman. He notes that the potential health effects from hazardous air pollutants were evaluated when Shell applied for, and received, its air permits from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP). Indeed, the DEP concluded that the air and health impacts would not exceed federal standards.

“Inhalation risk assessments performed by Shell and PA DEP during that period concluded that chronic cancer and non-cancer risks as well as acute non-cancer risks do not exceed PA DEP’s benchmarks,” Minnitte says. Shell agreed to implement air quality monitoring around its facility.

Moreover, Shell purchased pollution credits to offset its emissions. Industrial emitters frequently buy such credits, particularly in areas that don’t meet federal air quality standards. In Shell’s case, however, this has been controversial, because while the company secured enough credits for its nitrogen oxide pollution, it could not find enough credits for its VOC emissions. So it lobbied the Pennsylvania DEP to convert surplus nitrogen oxide credits into VOC credits. While this may help reduce pollution in a neighboring county from a shuttered facility, pollution will increase in the vicinity of the cracker plant when it comes online, opponents warn.

Another ethane cracker about 75 miles downriver in Ohio — backed by PTT Global Chemical, a Thailand-based petrochemical giant, and its Korean partner, Daelim Industrial Co. — has cleared the regulatory process and expects a final investment decision soon. A third ethane cracker has been proposed nearby in West Virginia. A 2017 report from IHS Markit, an industry consulting firm, found that northern Appalachia – the tri-state area of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia – could support four additional crackers after Shell’s project comes online.

According to the Breathe Project, the Shell facility, plus the PTT Global Chemical and the West Virginia plant, could result in additional health care costs of $20 million to $46 million annually just for Beaver County, where Shell’s facility is under construction. Those estimates include treatment for increased respiratory ailments, lung cancer, asthma, and cardiovascular disease, as well as for loss of work. Neighboring Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, could see $14 million to $32 million in additional health care costs annually due to the toll exacted on public health from the three plants, the Breathe Project estimated, based on modeling used by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Those numbers only accounted for fine particulate matter, not the array of other pollutants expected from the plant. In addition, the region already is impacted by the pollution, including methane leaks, from thousands of shale gas wells, compressor stations, and storage facilities.

Shell’s ethane cracker alone would require 1,000 fully producing shale gas wells to feed it on an ongoing basis, according to John Stolz, director of the Center for Environmental Research and Education at Duquesne University. But he notes that shale gas wells are known to have steep declines in their production rates, meaning that many more wells will need to be drilled to keep the cracker plant running for decades to come.

Some citizens in the region already are alarmed by the health and environmental impacts of the fracking boom. Allen Young is a correctional officer who lives roughly a mile or two from a shale gas well in Powhatan Point, Ohio that exploded and leaked gas for several weeks in February 2018 before it was contained by its owner, XTO Energy, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil. In the days following the explosion and gas leak, Young, his wife, and their two children started having nosebleeds, headaches, and respiratory problems, which he attributes to the leak.

When asked about the possibility of several ethane crackers coming into the region, including the proposed PTT Global Chemical cracker that would be built just a few miles from his house, Young replies, “I’ve seen firsthand there’s no regulation with these people. They do what the hell they want, when they want, how they want to do it. Money talks … This is kind of like the little Cancer Alley of the Ohio Valley.”

Young was referring to Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” a stretch of petrochemical and chemical facilities along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge that has been emitting toxic pollution into nearby communities for decades. Late last year, the U.S. Department of Energy laid out the case for locating a network of petrochemical plants in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, citing the national security concerns of having too many storage and petrochemical facilities concentrated near the Gulf of Mexico coast due to its vulnerability to natural disasters — a danger that will only grow as the climate continues to change.

The ethane crackers under construction or planned in the Ohio River Valley are illustrative of a broader wave of investment flowing into petrochemicals. According to the American Chemistry Council, from 2010 to late last year, more than $200 billion in investment poured into 333 chemical and petrochemical projects in the U.S., much of it “geared toward export markets for chemistry and plastics products.”

Although the growth in consumption of natural gas and oil is expected to slow worldwide in the decades ahead, in part because of the wider adoption of electric vehicles, no end is in sight for the consumption of plastic. “Petrochemicals are rapidly becoming the largest driver of global oil consumption,” the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a 2018 report. By mid-century, according to the IEA forecast, petrochemicals will account for half of the total growth in oil demand – more than trucks, aviation, or shipping.

It’s increasingly common for consumer plastic to make a mind-boggling journey that begins with drilling for oil and gas in Texas, separating out the various natural gas liquids from one another, cracking the ethane to produce polyethylene along the Gulf of Mexico coast, and shipping the plastic pellets to Asia to be processed into plastic wrap or packaging, which is then shipped back to grocery stores in the U.S. Ultimately, when that plastic reaches the consumer, it is often used once and discarded in a matter of minutes or seconds. The climate impact is profound. Carbon dioxide emissions from the petrochemical sector are expected to rise by 20 percent through 2030, according to the IEA.

In the Ohio Valley, the lure of major sources of new employment in a region that has seen an exodus of industries is hard to pass up, says Mehalik of the Breathe Project. But he adds that these communities shouldn’t have to bear the burdens of pollution that might also preclude other forms of cleaner economic development. Pittsburgh’s recent comeback has had little to do with heavy industry, Mehalik says, and the emergence of a major petrochemical industry puts a lot of that progress in jeopardy.

“So now, all of a sudden, it’s like, ‘Here we go again,’” says Mehalik. “It’s like we’re going back on a bender, doing things that we know are bad for us. And yet it’s happening. That, to me, is the ultimate outrage. It’s just an insane economic development strategy.”

Pennsylvania-(2015): Upper Devonian, Utica Shales Helped Drive Up NatGas Production

From an Article by Jamison Cocklin, NGI News Service, August 1, 2016

The Upper Devonian and Utica shales contributed meaningfully for the first time to Pennsylvania’s natural gas output in 2015, according to an annual oil and gas report that was released on Monday by the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (PA-DEP).

The state’s shale drillers produced more than 4.6 Tcf of natural gas in 2015, up from the 4.05 Tcf they produced in the prior year and well above the 1.06 Tcf they produced in 2011. While the Marcellus Shale remained the top-producing formation, contributing 4.5 Tcf of natural gas to the unconventional total, companies reported producing 47.2 Bcf from the Upper Devonian and 53.5 Bcf from the Utica.

It was the first time the PA-DEP has included a breakdown of production from those formations in its annual report, marking the turning point for multiple horizons in the state that came last year. About 26.7 Bcf was also reported from the Point Pleasant formation.

Upper Devonian shales, including the Burket, Genesee, Geneseo and Rhinestreet, all had reported production. The Burket produced the most last year at 21.5 Bcf. A group of shallower shales above the Marcellus, the Upper Devonian remains undeveloped by comparison. Much of the development in the state has come through wells drilled off existing Marcellus pads.

Similarly, development in the Utica outside of Ohio started to accelerate in recent years. It was in 2014 that operators began permitting wells and scheduling drilling to target the deep Utica in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The Keystone state’s first deep Utica test happened at the end of 2014, while one of West Virginia’s first commercial Utica wells was drilled that year as well.

Pennsylvania’s leading producers remained largely unchanged last year. Chesapeake Energy Corp. produced the most at 675.8 Bcf, followed by Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. with 633 Bcf; Range Resources Corp. with 415 Bcf, EQT Corp. with 380.9 Bcf, and Chief Oil & Gas LLC with 271.5 Bcf.

The PA-DEP issued 2,520 drilling permits last year, of which 2,081 were for unconventional wells and 439 were for conventional wells. The most unconventional permits were issued in Southwest Pennsylvania’s Washington and Greene counties, where operators received 361 and 328 of them, respectively. Warren County in the Northwest part of the state led the way with the most conventional permits at 130.

The number of wells drilled in the state last year dropped significantly from 2014 as operators shed rigs, cut budgets and managed through the downturn. The PA-DEP said 2,163 wells were drilled, of which 1,372 were unconventional.

PA-DEP also increased its compliance inspections at well sites across the state last year to 34,604 from 14,651 in 2009, the report said. Since 2009, the PA-DEP has collected about $23.2 million in fines and penalties from both conventional and unconventional producers. Most of the fines the agency collected during that time, or $7.1 million, came in 2014. The state collected $3.4 million in fines and penalties during 2015.

From 2010 through 2015, however, the PA-DEP noted that the number of violations at unconventional well sites decreased from 1,280 to 404, representing a 67% reduction. The number of violations at conventional well sites over roughly the same time dropped from 2,092 to 1,024.

Top Utica Wells (ca. April 2015)

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“We need better gas regulations”

Letter to the Editor, Washington (PA) Observer-Reporter, August 2, 2016

It comes as little surprise that living near oil and gas development increases asthma attacks, as pointed out in a recent article in the Observer-Reporter.

The recent Fossil Fumes report released by the Clean Air Task Force documents that Pennsylvania has 1.5 million residents living within a half-mile of oil and gas facilities. The report calls this zone the threat radius. Along with methane, the main component of natural gas, facilities often release other air pollutants that can harm our health, including formaldehyde, benzene, acetaldehyde, and ethyl benzene. These toxins can cause cancer, respiratory symptoms, anemia, brain damage, birth defects, eye irritation, and blood and neurological disorders.

I have four children, and over the past nine years, there have been 10 wells placed in a radius of 1-to-3 miles from our home, 28 wells within 9 miles, with three new well sites being constructed since June. On each of these well pads are anywhere from eight to 10 wells, all having to be fracked, along with two compressor stations, three transmission lines, holding tanks and holding residual waste ponds.

We continue to demand action against the oil and gas industry, and we want to see better regulations. There are no federal standards controlling methane already being emitted from existing oil and gas facilities. Gov. Tom Wolf has promised to address these issues, and continues to kick the can down the road. People living with oil and gas pollution in the United States need help, and we call on the president to direct the Environmental Protection Agency to create new standards to cut methane and associated toxic air pollution from the 1.2 million existing oil and gas facilities around the United States.

Lois Bjornson, Scenery Hill, Washington County, PA

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Range's Worstell Wastewater Impoundment (2013)

Truck driver sues Range Resources over injury claims from flow-back water

From an Article by Emily Petsko, Washington PA Observer-Reporter, May 8, 2015

A West Virginia truck driver is suing Range Resources over claims that company employees ordered him to keep working in wet clothes for hours after he was splashed with flow-back water at a Buffalo Township well site in Washington County, PA.

Russell Evans of Triadelphia (near Wheeling, WV) claimed he suffered chemical burns, blisters and rashes from the alleged incident May 21, 2013, at which time he was working for Equipment Transport LLC. The complaint was filed Wednesday in Allegheny County Court, in Pennsylvania.

Evans was transporting “reused” water a distance of about five miles to a well site in Buffalo Township, according to the complaint. During his second trip to the well site that morning, he backed his truck up to a “sloppy pond” used to store reused frack water and noticed that water was leaking from the back hatch of his tanker truck.

He claimed he was doused with water when he attempted to stop the leak and was told by a Range employee the water would not harm him. He claimed he was ordered to stay on site until he was cleared to leave, which was about two hours later.

Range employees roped off and swept the area where the spill occurred and made no attempt to examine Evans or arrange for him to take a “chemical bath,” he alleged. He claimed an employee told him to “wash the water off at a nearby McDonald’s.”

“Due to the fact that Mr. Evans was told the reused water was harmless, he remained in his wet clothes for several hours while he drove back to Equipment Transport LLC’s terminal in Dallas Pike, West Virginia,” the complaint alleged. “In total, Mr. Evans remained in these clothes for over four hours.”

Evans said he went to MedExpress when he developed a rash and blisters and claimed that physicians told him he could not be treated without knowledge of the chemicals he may have been exposed to. The complaint alleges Range “kept the chemical makeup of the fracking fluid a secret.”

He claimed he also was refused medical care at an emergency room in Wheeling a week after the alleged incident because of his inability to name the constituents of the water.

In addition to skin ailments, he claimed he suffered nausea, shortness of breath, indigestion, vertigo and headaches, as well as potentially permanent skin discoloration and permanent sensitivity to sunlight.

Evans’ wife, Karen Evans, also is a plaintiff in the lawsuit. She claims she suffered mental anguish and embarrassment and was deprived of the assistance and consortium of her husband.

Range spokesman Matt Pitzarella said the company is still reviewing the complaint. He said the components of all industry materials, including reuse water, are disclosed by law.

“There are no secrets, especially when it comes to safety,” he said in an email. “Range’s commitment to safety is shared by the nearly 900 men and women who work here, and it’s ingrained in our culture. The single most important thing for us is making sure that every worker goes home safe at the end of their workday.”

George M. Kontos, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, said they stand by their allegations.

“We certainly want to do all that we can to ensure that Range is held responsible for its actions in this case, and for misleading our client and the public about the harmful nature of this water,” Kontos said.

The plaintiffs are seeking punitive damages in an amount in excess of the arbitration limit, which is $35,000 in Allegheny County.

Marcellus Shale Chronicle -- WTAE Pittsburgh

WTAE News 4 — “CHRONICLE: Drilling Down” in Seven (7) Parts

By Sally Wiggins, Shannon Perrine, and Paul Van Osdol, WTAE News 4, Pittsburgh, December 18, 2014

Introduction. WTAE tells the story of the Marcellus Shale in a way that’s never been told before. Our team of reporters and photo journalists finds the stories of Pennsylvanians whose lives have been permanently altered by the Marcellus Shale drilling boom. Hosted by Sally Wiggin and Shannon Perrine, “CHRONICLE: Drilling Down” originally aired on WTAE in December 2014.

http://m.wtae.com/news/chronicle-drilling-down-intro/30298244

Part 1. Chronicle Host Sally Wiggin introduces us to landowners/farmers who are known in the industry as “Marcellus Millionaires”; while Chronicle Co-Host Shannon Perrine takes us through “Fracking 101″ to learn more about what it takes to harvest and drill for natural gas.

http://m.wtae.com/news/chronicle-drilling-down-part-1-marcellus-millionaires-fracking-101/30298572

Part 2. Chronicle’s Paul Van Osdol takes us to The Woodlands neighborhood near Evans City in Butler County where piece of mind has come at a high price according to the residents in our “Tapped Out” report. Then Chronicle Host Sally Wiggin takes us to Waynesburg in Greene County meet resident who now have jobs and an economy growth thanks to drilling in “A Town Transformed”

http://m.wtae.com/news/chronicle-drilling-down-part-2-tapped-out-a-town-transformed/30298828

Part 3. Chronicle Host Sally Wiggin introduces us to workers and local community governments that are benefiting from gas drilling in “The New Gold Rush” while Paul Van Osdol speaks with residents and scientists about the potential “Hidden Hazards” of gas compressor stations near residences.

http://m.wtae.com/news/chronicle-drilling-down-part-3-the-new-gold-rush-hidden-hazards/30298880

Part 4. Chronicle’s Paul Van Osdol speaks with property owners and the natural gas industry over the on-going battle over the use of Eminent Domain to take private property to build pipelines; we show you both sides of the debate with “Pipelines Across America”.

http://m.wtae.com/news/chronicle-drilling-down-part-4-pipelines-across-america/30300490

Part 5. Chronicle Co-Host Shannon Perrine focuses on how Pennsylvanians are returning home thanks to the natural gas drilling industry after working on other states for the first time in a long while in our “Back Home Again” segment. Chronicle Host Sally Wiggin takes us to the issue of drilling within State Parks and Forests.

http://m.wtae.com/news/chronicle-drilling-down-part-5-back-home-again/30300654

Part 6. Chronicle’s Paul Van Osdol looks into what happens when property owners are told that there will be drilling on their land and then in turn say no to the natural gas company drillers which then ends up in court.

http://m.wtae.com/news/chronicle-drilling-down-part-6-whose-land-is-it/30300682

Part 7. Chronicle Co-Host Shannon Perrine shows us our region has seen industrial booms before the natural gas industry erupted with a look back our history of success and decline and a return to prosperity.

http://m.wtae.com/news/chronicle-drilling-down-part-7-boom-to-bust-and-back-again/30300690

>>>>>>>>>>>> See also:  www.FrackCheckWV.net

Horsehead plant site on Ohio River

Beaver County firms place wager on Shell building petrochemical plant

From an Article by Timothy Puko and David Conti, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review,  March 18, 2014

After eight years of up and down business, Ed Vescovi is hoping the best is yet to come for the dormant biodiesel plant he oversees on the banks of the Ohio River in Beaver County. There are plans to revive the site with as many as 85 new workers, including a new river dock and wastewater treatment plant for Marcellus shale gas drillers. The ultimate bet is even bigger, that a multibillion-dollar petrochemical plant Royal Dutch Shell may build just down the road could help turn the largely wooded and hilly site into a booming industrial park.

The chance to get an early position on spin-off business from what would be a largely new industry in Western Pennsylvania was a big motivator for the site’s new owner, Weavertown Transport Leasing Inc. It paid more than $2 million to buy the 125 acres in October.

All around Beaver County leaders are seeing a similar push: Industrial parks are beefing up, engineering companies are moving in, and new offices, hotels and housing are on the way. While many Pittsburgh businesses are still hanging back until Shell decides, it’s clear that some are already moving fast to try and make it big.

Shell leaders have never committed to building during two years of deliberating since they picked Pennsylvania as the potential host. It has an option to buy the Horsehead Holding Corp. zinc smelter site, and, after three extensions, its final deadline to buy is coming next month, County Commissioner Joe Spanik said.

Shell leaders will be updating a working group of local and state officials in Hopewell, Spanik and Commissioner Dennis Nichols said. The parent company has been facing sagging profits and last week its global leaders said they will cut capital spending by a fifth and pull back from some shale development in the United States.

Shell has, however, continued to invest millions into Beaver County. It spent $1.87 million in December to buy the 5.5 acres home of Cubbyhole Self Storage on Frankfort Road to help reroute Route 18 along the Horsehead site. Shell talked to other property owners in the area, the seller said. Shell is also paying for ongoing demolition work to help clear part of the Horsehead site, both companies have said.

At Ambridge Regional Distribution & Manufacturing Center, 11 miles up the Ohio River from the Shell site, they’re planning for a 25 to 30 mile zone for spin-off businesses, said Gene Pash, president of site owner Value Ambridge Properties Inc. Its new plan maps out the addition of as many as six new buildings to provide top-class office and workspace for expanding industry, Pash said.  “We’re moving forward at warp speed,” he said..

The region’s drilling boom has helped give business a foundation to build on. The Weavertown corporation is moving up emergency spill response equipment and some of its stone business into a satellite operation to serve the drillers increasingly working north of Pittsburgh. That type of business is growing enough to justify a somewhat speculative investment, fostering belief that it will turn a profit even if Shell never builds, Weavertown’s CEO Fuchs said.

The company is planning $15 million to $20 million more to develop the whole site, according to county commissioners who helped Weavertown apply for state grants. “With any growth strategy, you have to be in early because then you’ll get short-listed more quickly.” Fuchs said. “We’re opportunistic.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Shell’s newly completed analysis of its second half of 2013 performance in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale gas operation, acquired in 2010 for a reported $4.7 billion, showed that the “vast majority” of its 630 wells are underperforming compared to its peers. In one county, its wells were producing at half the rate of competitors. An independent energy analyst, who estimated that Shell’s wells are likely to be uneconomic even with a recent rise in US gas prices, has meanwhile predicted that the international oil and petrochemicals group will not proceed with its proposed ethane cracker in Pennsylvania, according to www.Plasteurope.com

Shell studies ethane cracker site on Ohio River in western PA
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Article by Paul J. Gough, Pittsburgh Business Times, Nov. 5, 2013

Shell continues to have what Horsehead Holding Corp. calls an “extremely active” presence at the soon-to-be-closed Horsehead zinc plant in Beaver County as the conglomerate decides whether to build a petrochemical plant there.

Shell had “70 people crawling over the facility in the last week,” Horsehead CEO Jim Hensler told analysts on a conference call Tuesday reporting Horsehead’s third-quarter earnings. “They’re still actively involved.”

Shell announced in 2012 that it was looking to locate an ethane cracker at the Horsehead factory on the Ohio River in Potter Township near Monaca. While Shell has yet to make a final decision on the petrochemical plant, it has extended the option with Horsehead (Nasdaq: ZINC) until early January.

Hensler didn’t have much else to say about Shell. “We haven’t really had much news to report on it,” he told analysts when asked about it.

One thing is for certain: Horsehead won’t be producing zinc at the Potter Township plant after the end of the year or early next year. It’s set to open a state-of-the-art plant in North Carolina and close the zinc smelters in Beaver County. It sent a 60-day notice to workers there that the plant would be closing the six furnaces at Monaca.

“Some employees have decided to take jobs elsewhere” in anticipation of the plant’s closing, Hensler said. The North Carolina plant should begin operation by the end of the year.

But Horsehead also said it might continue zinc smelting at the facility for up to eight weeks on a few furnaces into 2014 for an overlap with the new plant to consume any remaining material.

“We may end up having a workforce of 30 to 40 people we may keep on site for several weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, to help with that decommissioning process,” Hensler said.

 Shell opened the bidding process for companies to supply ethane and took bids through October 4, or beyond. The company has deals with Consol Energy Inc., Hilcorp Energy Co., Noble Energy Inc. and Seneca Resources Corp., among others.