shell in pittsburgh
Illustration by Pittsburgh Quarterly
Role: Reporter
Western Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale represents an abundance of low-ost “wet” natural gas, which has an abundance of other economically useful chemicals, such as ethane, butane and propane. For instance, ethane — heated and chemically rearranged at extremely high temperatures — is the base of polyethylene, which eventually becomes any number of everyday plastic products.
Currently, Pennsylvania’s ethane travels in pipelines to the Gulf Coast — the hub of America’s petrochemical industry — and to Canada, where it’s loaded on ships to Norway.
Shell’s $6 billion Beaver County investment may just be the first in a region that could support up to four more crackers, according to a state-ommissioned report by London-ased firm IHS Markit. And that’s not factoring the ethane already being pumped out of state, or the amount that Shell plans to purchase when its plant goes online early next decade.
“You’re like the Saudi Arabia of the natural gas industry,” Ron Whitfield, IHS Markit’s VP of economics and country risk consulting, told a group in April in Pittsburgh. “That’s probably overstating it, but you’re close.”
The new Shell facility will “crack” ethane by heating it to 1,500-degrees Fahrenheit and rearranging the hydrogen and carbon molecules to create ethylene and subsequently polyethylene. Shell expects to have seven on-ite furnaces, producing 1.6 million tons of polyethylene a year, which could be used in anything from tires to shoes to diapers.
Read full story: https://pittsburghquarterly.com/between-the-issues/item/1449-what-will-shell-cracker-bring-with-it.html