MOSCOW (MRC) -- Shell Chemical Co. has decided in favor of building a massive plastics and petrochemicals complex in the Pittsburgh area, said Plasticsnews.
Construction is expected to start in late 2017, with production beginning “early in the next decade,” officials with Houston-based Shell said in a June 7 news release. When complete, the site is expected to have annual capacity of 3.5 billion pounds of polyethylene resin.
The project will be the first U.S. petrochemicals project built outside of the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana in several decades. It will take advantage of low-priced natural gas feedstock that’s been developed in the Appalachia region in recent years. Natural gas for the project will come from the Marcellus and Utica shale regions.
The complex will be located on the Ohio River near Monaca, Pa., about 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. "As a result of its close proximity to gas feedstock, the complex, and its customers, will benefit from shorter and more dependable supply chains, compared to supply from the Gulf Coast," officials said in the release. "The location is also ideal because more than 70 percent of North American polyethylene customers are within a 700-mile radius of Pittsburgh."
Shell first announced that it was considering the project in early 2012, but company officials told Plastics News as recently as May that the firm hadn’t made a final decision. Shell had taken several actions to prepare the site for development, including building a heavy-haul bridge across State Route 18 that would allow trucks to reach the proposed site.
Shell also had agreed to spend up to USD69 million to move a water intake site from the Monaca location and build a new water treatment site for Center Township. That move would include construction of a dock facility. Pennsylvania state officials already have approved Shell’s Act 2 Plan, which allows the firm to improve the environmental footprint of the site.
Most shale-based PE/ethylene projects have been aimed at the Gulf Coast, where three major expansions will open next year. Several other projects have been proposed for the Appalachian region in recent years, but the Shell project in Pennsylvania is the only one to be moving forward.
As MRC informed earlier, Shell Chemicals has asked the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) for permission to expand ethylene production capacity at its Deer Park, TX, facility. The company noted that several steps remain before it would make a final investment decision, ranging from concluding preparatory engineering and design work and seeking permits from Texas regulators, to evaluating downstream product support and any other potential global investments.
Royal Dutch Shell plc is an Anglo-Dutch multinational oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the biggest company in the world in terms of revenue and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors". Shell is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing, petrochemicals, power generation and trading.
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