Ethane cracker plant in Beaver County about 70% complete, Shell executive says - TribLIVE

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Construction of a multibillion-dollar ethane cracker plant in Beaver County is about 70% complete, a Shell Global executive said Tuesday during the Shale Insight conference.

Hilary Mercer, Shell Global’s vice president of Pennsylvania Chemicals, spent about a half-hour during the virtual conference describing the development of the facility, work on which had paused because of the covid-19 pandemic.

“Everything was going really well. We’d come through the winter, we were into March, the weather was getting better and we had our maximum workforce (of more than 8,000 people) on site,” Mercer said. “And then covid hit.”

Construction had paused in late March to allow for a deep cleaning of the facility.

Development is back up and running now with just fewer than 6,000 employees, Mercer said.

“We intend to be here for many, many, many years to come,” Mercer said. “Therefore, we’re part of that community, and we were starting to hear concerns from local officials about the size of our workforce and the impact that would have on local health providers if we had a major outbreak at the site.”

Leaders at the facility came up with a plan to implement covid-19 mitigation measures and slowly bring back workers. With extensive testing protocols, social distancing measures and other requirements, Mercer said there has so far been no evidence of covid-19 transmission on the premises.

Mercer also provided an overview of how the site has changed since 2014, when work first began. Showing aerial photographs, she pointed to areas where the landscape was altered and where facilities have been built. Among some of the changes were rerouting a highway and removing part of a hill to create more room for the facility. Soil was moved to remedy and contain contamination from past manufacturing at the site, Mercer said.

“We took this existing site … and actually repurposed it,” she said. “And that was a significant environmental action.”

Mercer said all of the major equipment and modules developed across the United States and around the world are now at the site. All that remains, she said, is to put it all together. Most substations are live and equipment is being moved from construction to “pre-commissioning.” The vast majority of plastics to be produced at the plant are intended for use within the United States, Mercer said.

When the plant begins operating, it will process ethane from the Marcellus and Utica shale reservoirs into ethylene and polyethylene, the building blocks of plastic. Officials have said it will employ about 600 full-time workers, and hundreds of other jobs could be created by spinoff companies related to the plastics industry.

Mercer also said during the conference that the Falcon Pipeline project is 95% percent complete. The project includes installing a pipeline nearly 100 miles long across the region to transport ethane, a natural gas, to the plant. She said 98% of the pipeline is installed on private land, and no part of its construction required the use of eminent domain.

The Shale Insight conference began Tuesday morning and will run until Thursday. Tuesday’s sessions focused heavily on how fossil fuel extraction has intersects with the economy, technology development and the 2020 election.

Teghan Simonton is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Teghan at 724-226-4680, tsimonton@triblive.com or via Twitter .

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