State will soon be home to the East Coast’s first cracker plant
BEAVER COUNTY—Shell’s planned cracker plant in western Pennsylvania, which will be the largest facility of its kind in North America, could have a $6 billion economic impact on the state and provide thousands of construction and permanent jobs. Dennis Gavin, secretary of the state’s Department of Community and Economic Development, called it “a game changer.”
Gavin told American Gas that Royal Dutch Shell is expected to break ground in late 2017 and begin production in early 2020.
The plant will make plastics from natural gas extracted from the state’s Marcellus Shale region and help attract industries that use the natural gas byproducts.
Gavin said it is the first cracker plant on the East Coast and will have “a very profound effect on the Pittsburgh region. It’s a brand-new industry for Pennsylvania. Shell has said to us that this location is much better situated than the Gulf Coast. It sits right on top of the feed stock, and it’s within an eight-hour drive of 60 percent of the nation’s population.”
The Governor’s Action Team has been working with other industries seeking to locate in the same area in order to be close to the cracker plant, Gavin said.
He added that the state’s Department of Environmental Protection has been working with Shell since the beginning of the project, and the company has passed 30 independent environmental reviews.
“Shell has done everything they needed to do in an environmentally friendly way,” he said. “I can’t say enough good things about the great partners they’ve been.”
According to DCED, Pennsylvania is the second-largest natural gas producer in the country. Southwestern Pennsylvania’s shale gas contains high levels of ethane, which Shell’s new plant can use to produce ethylene, a main ingredient for the plastics industry. In a news release, Shell said building an ethane-fed cracker plant would unlock significant gas production in the Marcellus region by providing a local outlet for the ethane.
Jobs at the plant will include maintenance workers, operations workers, management and engineers. The state has provided funding for workforce development.
In June, when Shell announced its decision to build in Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Wolf said the project is “part of a much-needed, longer-term plan to translate our abundant resources to make Pennsylvania a leader in downstream production.”
The project will “pay dividends to western Pennsylvanians now and for future generations to come,” he said.