LNG export terminal

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Book Review Part I: ‘Public Responses to Fossil Fuel Export: Exporting Energy and Emissions in a Time of Transition’

In this book review, Ted Auch, PhD, reviews the first three chapters of Public Responses to Fossil Fuel Export. Published in January 2022, this work explores the social dimensions of the global fossil fuel export system, with a focus on public perceptions and responses to new infrastructures.

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LNG development puts Wyalusing, Pennsylvania in the cross-hairs

New Fortress Energy plans to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in Wyalusing, Pennsylvania, but residents in close proximity to the extensive facility and those along the transportation routes are pushing back due to health and safety concerns.

Overview

North America has an excess of fracked gas. The price of gas continues to plummet, due largely to an oversupply that exceeds market demand from Americans who want to enjoy their so-called “energy independence.” According to the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA), there is almost 18% more stored gas at the end of 2019 as there was at the end of 2018, translating to an increase of over 500 billion cubic feet over the course of a year.

What was once a promised economic boom to many communities has given way to bust. This is due, in part, to less production across the fracking fields, to the cancellation of numerous pipelines, and to the lack of domestic markets for fracked gas.

As costs for wind, solar, and grid-scale battery storage continue to drop, people are increasingly less reliant on fossil fuels. Aside from underground storage, what can industry do with all that excess product so industry has a justification to keep drilling?

Rather than cutting back on production, industry chooses to relieve domestic over-saturation by sending the gas off-shore for export.

While gas is typically moved from source to consumer via pipelines, transporting gas long distances overseas presents a technical challenge. Industry chooses to compress the gas under pressure or cryogenics so that it takes up less space. Liquefied natural gas, or LNG, is simply super-cooled methane, stored at minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit.

A new LNG project in northern Pennsylvania

A little more than a year ago, New Fortress Energy announced plans to invest $800 million to develop a liquefied natural gas plant along the scenic Susquehanna River in the Bradford County, Pennsylvania community of Wyalusing. In this quiet community of fewer than 600 people, formerly open fields and woodland are slated to be converted into massive LNG complex spanning 260 acres. The plant would produce approximately 3.6 million gallons of LNG each day.

Located on the site of the proposed LNG project is a historic marker, memorializing the pre-Colonial settlement of Friedenshütten. Here, indigenous Mahican, Lenape, and Haudenosaunee converts to Christianity lived with Moravian missionaries. The village was active between 1765 and 1772. According to Katherine Faull of Bucknell University “the Friedenshütten mission was dissolved in 1772, ostensibly because of the uncertainty of the land deals that had been made with the Cayuga who had jurisdiction over that part of Pennsylvania.” Portions of the settlement structure area visible in the 1768 map (Figure 1) are 700 feet from the New Fortress methane liquefaction buildings.

Figure 1. Map by Georg Wenzel Golkowsky, 1768 (TS Mp.213.13, Unity Archives, Herrnhut)

New Fortress Energy has plans to cut a 50-foot-wide stormwater drainage ditch directly through this historic site. Construction of the plant would reportedly create up to 500 temporary jobs, and 50 permanent ones.

Figure 2. Aerial view of site preparation work at the New Fortress LNG plant site. Source: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance

The site plan for the new facility, developed in October 2018, includes large gas engines, a liquefaction facility, a hydrocarbon impoundment basin, LNG storage and pumps, a gas treatment facility, transformers, and tanker staging areas. Some features are sited within 500 feet of the railroad.

Figure 3. Proposed site plan of the New Fortress LNG facility in Wyalusing, Pennsylvania. Map by FracTracker Alliance.

An air quality plan for the New Fortress LNG facility was approved in July, 2019. Although construction was well underway starting in spring 2019, work is currently paused on the site. New Fortress has not indicated when work would resume, but expects the construction process to span two to 2.5 years.

Where to, after Wyalusing?

Without an adequate market for the gas in the United States, LNG is destined for shipping overseas in specially-designed LNG carrier ships. In 2018, according to US government data reported in rigzone.com:

“….28 countries in total received LNG exports during 2018. However, just ten countries accounted for 82 percent of the U.S. LNG direct tanker exports that year and the top four markets shared 187 shipments between them. South Korea, the top destination, received 73 cargoes in all, followed by Mexico with 53, Japan with 37 and lastly China with 24. Of the remainder, Jordan, Chile, India, Turkey, Spain, Argentina, and Brazil took only a small number of shipments each. In addition to the standard large shipments of LNG in dedicated tankers, small shipments of LNG in special containers known as ISOs were sent to the Bahamas and Barbados.”

Presently, plans are in the works for the construction of a new LNG export facility in Gibbstown, New Jersey, located just downstream from Philadelphia on the Delaware River. The Gibbstown site was formerly the home of Dupont Repauno Works, where dynamite was manufactured from 1880 to 1954. Later, the main products made there were commodity chemicals such as nitric acid. The proposed export terminal design includes two 43-foot-deep docks that would accommodate LNG tankers.

The advocacy organization “Empower NJ” provides a comprehensive description here of the proposed expansion of the deepwater LNG export terminal at Gibbstown. LNG delivered to the site would be stored in an old underground cavern previously used by Dupont. While dredging for a single dock at Gibbstown was approved by the Delaware River in 2019, new plans to build two more loading berths at a second dock are now under consideration.

Modes of transportation from Wyalusing to Gibbstown

In collaboration with Delaware Riverkeeper Network (DRN), FracTracker looked at potential overland routes for how the LNG produced in Wyalusing would reach the nearest export terminal in Gibbstown, New Jersey, a distance of 200 or more miles away.

While transportation by rail of liquefied natural gas had not been permitted by federal regulations, a significant change in rules occurred in June 2020. Under pressure from the current administration in Washington, DC, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) issued a final rule that authorized the bulk transportation of LNG by rail.

Plans on how to deliver the LNG from the plant in Wyalusing to the export terminal in Gibbstown, New Jersey have not been finalized, and could be by roadway or railway, or both. According to the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania-based Citizen’s Voice:

In its assessment, PHMSA concluded that transporting LNG via roadways carries the same inherent risks as railways, but there is a higher likelihood of an accident because of the larger number of trucks needed compared to train cars.

The DOT-113 tank cars New Fortress received approval for can carry nearly 30,700 gallons of LNG — three times more than a single tanker truck. But, because train cars carry significantly more LNG and are transported together along railways, an incident “could lead to higher consequences,” according to the environmental assessment.

How much risk?

Because there is little to no precedent of transporting such high volumes of liquefied natural gas on roads or railroads, the extent of the disaster that could occur from a leak or crash is generally unknown. However, Delaware Riverkeeper has cited research warning about the unique characteristics of supercooled gas if it rapidly expands and spreads across terrain:

“….transport of LNG has unique safety hazards, exposing those along this particular rail route to unprecedented and unjustifiable risk. An LNG release boils furiously into a flammable vapor cloud 600 times larger than the storage container. An unignited ground-hugging vapor cloud can move far distances,[1]  and exposure to the vapor can cause extreme freeze burns. If in an enclosed space, it asphyxiates, causing death.1 If ignited, the fire is inextinguishable; the fire is so hot that second-degree burns can occur within 30 seconds for those exposed within a mile. An LNG release can cause a Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion.[2]  The explosive force of LNG is similar to a thermobaric explosion – a catastrophically powerful bomb. The 2016 U.S. Emergency Response Guidebook advises fire chiefs initially to immediately evacuate the surrounding 1-mile area.[3]  No federal field research has shown how far the vapor cloud can move chiefs initially to immediately evacuate the surrounding 1-mile area.[4]  No federal field research has shown how far the vapor cloud can move…”

You can read Delaware Riverkeeper’s full statement of the organization’s opposition to the transportation of LNG in rail cars here.

Visualizing the routes

FracTracker mapped the most likely transport routes by road and by rail, along with demographic information (Figures 5 – 9). In collaboration with DRN, we also assessed minority and low-income population density along each route, using the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s environmental justice (EJ) screening dataset, EJSCREEN. “Minority” as defined by the United States Census data used by EPA, refers to individuals who reported their race and ethnicity as something other than “non-Hispanic White” alone.

On average, around 21% of the population along the truck routes, and about 25% of the population along the train routes, is part of an EJ community. EJ communities are those that are disproportionately impacted by environmental hazards and with increased vulnerability to said hazards. Due to systemic racism, injustice, and poverty, EJ communities tend to have higher proportions of residents who are low-income and/or minorities.

  Total Population Minority Population Low-Income Population
Truck Route A 612,747 123,071 (20%) 122,830 (20%)
Truck Route B 929,236 207,924 (22%) 183,420 (20%)
Rail Route A 1,649,638 477,816 (29%) 392,577 (24%)
Rail Route B 1,947,544 479,500 (25%) 411,536 (21%)

Figure 4. Demographics of Environmental Justice (EJ) communities along New Fortress Energy’s liquified natural gas (LNG) transportation routes in the eastern United States.

Click here to view this map fullscreen, in its own window.

And click through the tabs below to see static images of the various routes.

Figure 5. Rail Route A passes within 2 miles of a population of 1,649,638. 29% (477,816 individuals) are minorities, and 24% (392,577 individuals) are low income, according to 2010 US Census data compiled by the Environmental Protection Agency as part of their EJSCREEN program. Map made by FracTracker Alliance and published by Delaware Riverkeeper Network.

Growing municipal and regulatory opposition to transport of LNG through communities

Municipal opposition against the plan to construct the LNG facility at Wyalusing is mounting. On Wednesday, September 2, 2020, the Borough Council of Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania (Lackawanna County) voted in opposition to the New Fortress Energy LNG project. Their resolution asked the Delaware River Basin Commission to vote to disapprove Dock 2, the cargo destination of the LNG trucks and trains that will be traversing Lackawanna County with their hazardous content.

And in most recent news, on September 10, the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) voted to delay approving an application to expand the port facilities at Gibbstown, NJ that would have enabled LNG tankers to dock there. In this important turn of events, the representatives from New York, Delaware and New Jersey voted for the delay, while the Pennsylvania representative abstained, and the Federal representative from the US Army Corps of Engineers voted to deny it. The vote was preceded by a comment period in which the public expressed unanimous desire to stop the project, citing impacts to human and environmental health, as well as impacts from methane on climate catastrophe.

In the upcoming months, prior to when they meet again until December, the DRBC will more deeply consider the details of the application. Until that time, forward progress on the LNG plant and the export terminal is effectively halted.

 

8/24/21: This article was updated with the following information:

At their December meeting, the DRBC issued a final approval for construction of the terminal to move ahead, voting 4-0 in favor of the proposal, with the representative from New York State abstaining.

In conclusion

As communities start to consider the impacts to health and safety posed by massive fossil fuel infrastructure—whether that is pipelines, compressor stations, drilling operations, or rail and road transport—clean energy alternatives like solar, wind, and geothermal become the sensible option for all. We applaud the elected officials in Clarks Summit for their vote early this month, and look forward to more following suit.

To stay up to date on the regional pushback against LNG and engage your voice in resistance, learn more at protectnorthernpa.org or sign-up to become an E-activist with Delaware Riverkeeper Network.

By Karen Edelstein, Eastern Program Coordinator, FracTracker Alliance

Feature photo by Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, with aerial support by Lighthawk

[1] “Immediate ignition with liquid still on the ground could cause the spill to develop into a pool fire and present a radiant heat hazard. If there is no ignition source, the LNG will vaporize rapidly forming a cold gas cloud that is initially heavier than air, mixes with ambient air, spreads and is carried downwind.” P. 10 “Methane in vapor state can be an asphyxiant when it displaces oxygen in a confined space.” P. 11. SP 20534 Special Permit to transport LNG by rail in DOT-113C120W rail tank cars. Final Environmental Assessment. Docket No. PHMSA-2019-0100. December 5, 2019. P. 10.

[2] “LNG tank BLEVE is possible in some transportation scenarios.” Sandia National Laboratories, “LNG Use and Safety Concerns (LNG export facility, refueling stations, marine/barge/ferry/rail/truck transport)”, Tom Blanchat, Mike Hightower, Anay Luketa. November 2014. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1367739  P. 23.

[3] US DOT Emergency Response Guidebook. https://www.phmsa.dot.gov/hazmat/erg/emergency-response-guidebook-erg

[4] US DOT Emergency Response Guidebook. https://www.phmsa.dot.gov/hazmat/erg/emergency-response-guidebook-erg

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Appalachia storage hub prospects map by FracTracker

Storing Natural Gas Liquids in Appalachia

Last month, the Department of Energy (DOE) submitted a report titled Ethane Storage and Distribution Hub in the United States to Congress. The report sums up several other recent geologic studies and economic analyses that evaluate the potential to create a large petrochemical hub in southwest Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and northeastern Kentucky.

Most people call this region Appalachia because of the mountains, or the Ohio River Valley because of the namesake river. The petrochemical industry looks deeper: they’ve branded it Shale Crescent USA, after the shale gas thousands of feet underground. This article summarizes recent developments on storing natural gas liquids, including ethane, in this region – whatever you prefer to call it.

Background

The United States currently produces more natural gas than any other country in the world, with much of the fracked gas coming from the Marcellus and Utica shales in Appalachia. The DOE report predicts that production in this region will continue growing from an estimated at 8.19 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) in 2017, to 13.55 Tcf in 2025 and 19.5 Tcf in 2050.

Natural Gas Production Estimates:

8.19 Tcf in 2017
13.55 Tcf in 2025
19.5 Tcf in 2050

In addition to oil and gas, fracking produces natural gas liquids (NGLs), such as ethane, propane, and butane. NGLs are a key component of the petrochemical industry, which takes these resources and converts them into plastics and resins. As industry extracts more natural gas, it will also be left with more NGLs to manage.

Hoping to profit off NGLs, the oil and gas industry is investing in petrochemical production. In the Appalachian basin, the DOE predicts that production of ethylene from ethane will reach 640,000 barrels a day by 2025 (this is 20 times the amount the region produced in 2013). The Gulf Coast of the U.S., as well as countries in Asia and the Middle East, are also growing their production capacities. Globally, ethylene production is projected to grow 31% from 2017 to 2025.

The rise of the petrochemical industry comes at a point when there’s an increasing global awareness of the disaster that is plastic pollution. As much as 12.7 million tons of plastic waste goes into the ocean each year, affecting over 700 species of marine animals. On land, plastic waste is often shipped to less developed nations, where it ends up polluting poor communities and contaminating their drinking water and air.

Nevertheless, politicians in PA, OH, and WV are working hard to attract petrochemical build-out in Appalachia. The region already houses much of the infrastructure needed for a petrochemical hub, such as fracked wells that pump out NGLs and processing plants to separate these liquids from the rest of the natural gas stream. One thing it’s missing, however, is significant capacity to store natural gas liquids – particularly ethane.

Why does industry need storage?

Ethane storage offers several benefits to the petrochemical industry. For one, it would serve as a steady supply of ethane for plants like ethane crackers, which “crack” ethane into ethylene to make polyethylene plastic. With this constant supply (transported to crackers via pipeline), plants can operate 24 hours a day, year round, and avoid using energy to shutdown and restart. Storage also allows industry to adapt to fluctuations in demand and price.

Another argument for expanding petrochemical activity in Appalachia is to diversify the industry’s geography. The current petrochemical hub in Texas and Louisiana (where over 95% of the country’s ethylene production takes place) is subject to extreme weather events. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey caused over half of the nation’s polyethylene production capacity to shut down. The report mentions “extreme weather events” multiple times as justification for building a petrochemical hub in Appalachia. This stance strongly suggests that the DOE is preparing for increased hurricanes and flooding from climate change, although this is never explicitly stated. Unsurprisingly, the industry’s role in causing climate change is left out from the report as well.

What does storage look like?

While the term ‘natural gas liquid’ may seem like an oxymoron, it refers to the different forms the substances take depending on temperature and pressure. At normal conditions, NGLs are a gas, but when pressurized or exposed to extremely cold temperatures,  they act as a liquid. NGLs occupy significantly less space as a liquid, and are therefore moved and stored as a pressurized or refrigerated liquid.

Storage can be in above ground tanks, but is often underground in gas fields or underground caverns. NGLs are highly volatile, and storing them above ground puts workers and surrounding communities at risk. For example – last week, an above ground storage tank exploded at a natural gas processing plant in Washington County, PA, sending four people to the hospital. While underground storage is perceived as “safer,” it still poses significant risks, particularly in a geography like Appalachia full of wells, coal mines, and pipelines. This underground infrastructure can cause NGLs to leak during storage or the land above them to collapse.

A study out of West Virginia University, titled “A Geologic Study to Determine the Potential to Create an Appalachian Storage Hub For Natural Gas Liquids,” identified three different types of storage opportunities along the Ohio and Kanawha river valleys:

Underground storage options

  1. Mined-rock cavern: Companies can mine caverns in formations of limestone, dolomite, or sandstone. The formation must be at least 40 feet thick to hold NGLs. This study focused on formations of the Greenbrier Limestone, which occurs throughout southwestern Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky.
  2. Salt cavern: Developing salt caverns involves injecting water underground to create a void, and then pumping NGLs into the cavern. Suitable salt caverns have “walls” at least 100 feet thick above and below the cavern. The study recommended salt caverns 1,500 to 3,000 feet deep, but considered those as deep as 6,700 feet.
  3. Gas field: NGLs can also be stored in natural gas fields or depleted gas fields in underground sandstone reservoirs. Suitable gas fields are 2,000 feet deep or more according to the WVU study.

Where could storage sites be located?

The West Virginia University study identified and ranked thousands of gas fields, several salt caverns, and many regions in the Greenbrier Limestone that could serve as NGL storage. Most of the top-ranked opportunities are in West Virginia, near the state’s borders with Ohio and Pennsylvania, and several cross beneath the Ohio or Kanawha rivers. The researchers conclude with three “prospects,” which are circled in Figure 1.

A map of storing natural gas liquids opportunities in the Ohio River Valley

Figure 1. NGL storage opportunities identified by the Appalachian Oil and Natural Gas Consortium at West Virginia University

The table below lists the specific storage opportunities in each prospect, as well as the available data on depth, thickness, and acreage of the formations. Also listed are the counties that the storage facility would cross into.

Name Type Depth (feet) Thickness (feet) Counties Land Size (acres)
Salina F4 Salt cavern Salt cavern >100 to 150 Primarily Columbiana, OH, also Hancock, WV & Beaver, PA 83,775
Salina F4 salt cavern Salt cavern 100 to 150 Primarily Jefferson, OH, also Brooke & Hancock WV, & Washington, PA 129,017
Ravenna-Best Consolidated Field Depleted gas field 4,107 to 6,497 25 to 156 Mahoning, OH 69,000
No specific field was ranked Gas field in Oriskany sandstone 3,000 to 7,000 0 to 70+ Throughout the prospect

Existing NGL Storage

Storage in the United States

The U.S. has two major NGL storage hubs (both in salt caverns): One is in Mont Belvieu, Texas and the other in Conway, Kansas. These facilities are strategically located near the petrochemical industry’s hub along the Gulf Coast. There is also underground storage in Sarnia, Ontario.

Industry in Appalachia is connected to these storage facilities via pipelines, including Sunoco’s Mariner West that transports ethane to Sarnia, and the Appalachia-Texas-Express (ATEX) pipeline that takes ethane to Mont Belvieu. However, as suggested above, NGL storage in Appalachia is also under development.

Appalachia Storage & Trading Hub

Appalachia Development Group LLC is heading the development of the Appalachia Storage & Trading Hub initiative. The company has not announced the specific location for underground storage, but has been working hard to secure the funds  for this development.

In September of 2017, Appalachia Development Group submitted part 1 of a 2-part application for a $1.9 billion loan to the US DOE Loan Program Office. The DOE approved the application the following January, inviting the company to submit the second part, which is currently pending. This second part goes through the DOE’s Title XVII innovative clean energy projects loan program.

According to the DOE, this program “provides loan guarantees to accelerate the deployment of innovative clean energy technology.” Paradoxically, this means the DOE may give clean energy funds to the petrochemical industry, which is fueled by fossil fuels and does not provide energy but rather plastic and resins.

Steven Hedrick, the CEO of Appalachia Development Group, was part of a West Virginia trade delegation that traveled to China in 2017 to meet with China’s largest energy company. This meeting, which included President Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping, resulted in China Energy agreeing to invest $83.7 billion to support natural gas and petrochemical development in West Virginia. (Of note: This agreement has faced uncertainty following Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods). West Virginia Governor Jim Justice later criticized Hedrick’s involvement in the meeting, where he promoted the interests of his private company.

Mountaineer NGL Storage Project

Another company, Energy Storage Ventures LLC, has plans to construct NGL storage near Clarington, Ohio. This facility would be on land formerly belonging to Quarto Mining Company’s Powhatan Mine No. 4. Called “Mountaineer NGL Storage,” the project would develop salt caverns to store propane, ethane, and butane. Each cavern could store 500,000 barrels (21 million gallons) of NGLs.

The video below, made by the Energy Storage Ventures, describes the process of developing salt caverns for storage.

The Mountaineer NGL Storage Project location is about 12 miles south of the PTTGC ethane cracker (if built), in Dilles Bottom Ohio. It’s also roughly 60 miles south of the Shell ethane cracker (under construction) in Potter Township, PA. If developed, the project could supply these plants with ethane and allow them to continuously operate. According to Energy Storage Ventures President, David Hooker, the project would also trigger $500 million in new pipelines in the region and $1 billion in fractionation facilities to separate NGLs.

Energy Storage Ventures wants to build three pipelines beneath the Ohio River. Two pipelines (one for ethane and one for propane and butane) would deliver NGLs to the storage site from Blue Racer Natrium, a fractionation plant that separates dry natural gas from NGLs. A third pipeline would take salt brine water from the caverns to the Marshall County chlorine plant (currently owned by Westlake Chemical Corp). These facilities, as well as the locations of the two ethane crackers storage could serve, are in the map below. This map also includes the potential storage opportunities the researchers at West Virginia University identified.

View map full screen | How FracTracker maps work

Referring to concerns about building pipelines and caverns near the Ohio River, a drinking water source for 5 million people, the company’s president David Hooker stated, “This is not rocket science. These things have operated safely for years… Salt, at depth, is impermeable. You won’t see any migration out of the salt.”

This video is a rendering of what the 200-acre site will look like, including the salt water impoundment structure (capable of holding 3.25 million barrels), and the infrastructure needed to deliver products and equipment by rail and truck:

The company has stated that it owns both the land and mineral rights it needs to develop the caverns, but the project has also faced delays.

Where is this plastic going?

One common argument for a petrochemical hub in Appalachia is the region’s proximity to the downstream sector of petrochemical industry. Manufacturers such as PPG Industries, Dow Chemical Inc., and BASF are all based in the area and could make use of the feedstock from an Appalachian hub.

However, the report doesn’t make it clear where the plastic and resin end products will land. It does state that the demand in the United States isn’t enough to swallow up two major petrochemical hubs worth of plastic.

Export markets

The DOE report states that, “the development of new petrochemical capacity in Appalachia is not necessarily in conflict with Gulf Coast expansion.” Since the Gulf Coast already has the infrastructure for export, it could focus on international markets while Appalachia meets domestic demand. Alternatively, the Appalachian hub could serve European destinations while the Gulf Coast hub delivers to Pacific Basin and South American destinations. Plastic consumption is highly correlated with population, so countries with large, growing populations such as India and China are likely markets.

It’s important to note that the U.S. isn’t the only country increasing its production of petrochemical derivatives, and as the report notes, exports from the US “may face a challenge from global capacity surplus.” Figure 2 shows that global production of ethylene is expected to surpass global consumption, shown in Figure 3. The graph of consumption likely ignores the impact of plastic-reducing policies that hundreds of countries and cities are implementing. As such, it may be an over-estimation.

Historical and Projected Ethylene Production Capacity by Global Area

Figure 2. Historical and future ethylene production by global region. Source

Graph of ethylene consumption by global area.

Figure 3. Ethylene consumption by global region. Source

In the end, it appears that the industry’s plan is to build first, and worry about markets later, hoping that a growing supply of affordable plastic will increase consumption.

Perhaps the reason industry is so eager to forge a market is because oil and gas is struggling with a lot of debt. A study out of the Sightline Institute found that as of the first half of 2018, “US fracking-focused oil and gas companies continued their eight-year cash flow losing streak.”  The Center for International Environmental Law found that petrochemicals generally have a larger profit margin than oil and gas: “In 2015, ExxonMobil’s Chemicals segment accounted for roughly 10% of its revenues but more than 25% of its overall profits.”

Plastic is one way to subsidize this dying industry…

Beyond Storing Natural Gas Liquids

The motive behind developing storage is to catalyze and support a major industry. The DOE report states that the new infrastructure required “would include gathering lines, processing plants, fractionation facilities, NGLs storage facilities, ethane crackers, and then…plants for polyethylene, ethylene dichloride, ethylene oxide, and other infrastructure.” A hub would require more fracking and wastewater injection wells, cause even more heavy truck traffic that adds stress to roadways, and require additional power plant capacity to serve its electricity demand.

In other words, an Appalachian petrochemical hub would profoundly impact the region. The report contains an in-depth analysis of the economic impacts, but fails to mention any environmental concerns, social impacts on communities, or health effects. The other major studies on this buildout,  mentioned above, follow a similar pattern.

A quick look at industry along the Gulf Coast tells you that environmental, social, and health concerns are very real and produce their own economic debts. The petrochemical industry has created a “cancer alley” in Texas and Louisiana, disproportionately impacting low-income and minority communities. Yet, industry is preparing another hub without a single comprehensive environmental impact assessment or health assessment for the region. As each pipeline, fracked well, and plant is permitted separately, we can’t properly assess the cumulative negative impacts this development will have on our waterways, forests, soil, or air quality. Therefore, we also won’t know how it will affect our health.

Looking into the future

The report analyzes the industry through 2050. It states that NGL output in Appalachia:

… will continue to grow throughout the forecast period. As natural gas production gradually migrates away from liquids-rich gas areas, which are expected to slowly deplete, to dryer areas, the rate of growth in NGPL production will slow relative to the rate of natural gas production growth.

In 31 years, the kids growing up in Appalachia right now could be left with brownfields, dried-up wells, and abandoned ethane crackers. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Last year, the DOE reported that there are more jobs in clean energy, energy efficiency, and alternative vehicles than in fossil fuels. By using funds such as the DOE’s Title XVII innovative clean energy loan – for actual clean energy – we can bring economic development to the region that will be relevant past 2050 and that won’t sacrifice our health and natural resources for short-term private gains.

By Erica Jackson, Community Outreach and Communications Specialist