Shell petrochemical plant in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, now operational
By Paul J. Gough – Reporter, Pittsburgh Business Times
Nov 15, 2022
https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2022/11/15/shell-petrochemical-plant-beaver-county-pittsburgh.html
After a decade in development and construction, Shell PLC's (NYSE: SHEL) petrochemical plant in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, is now operational.
The plant, which employs about six hundred full-time workers as well as hundreds of contractors on a 384-acre site northwest of Pittsburgh, has been ramping up over the past year after four years of construction that changed the skyline along the Ohio River in Potter Township.
“Building this world-class facility is a fantastic achievement and one the team can be proud of. It’s a showcase of Shell’s project delivery expertise,” Shell Downstream Director Huibert Vigeveno said in a statement.
Ethane derived from the Marcellus and Utica shale regions will be transported from Cadiz, Ohio, and Houston, Pennsylvania, to the plant via the 93-mile Falcon pipeline. The plant should be in full production by the second half of next year. It creates polyethylene pellets, which are the building blocks of many consumer and industrial plastics, at the rate of 3.5 billion pounds a year.
A look back at the development of Shell's Beaver County plant
Ten years ago, a parcel of land along the Ohio River in tiny Potter Township was known for a century as a zinc production plant. But chemical giant Shell had a different vision, and it's played out ever since.
The plant was by no means a sure thing: While Shell made it official in 2012 that it was considering a petrochemical plant in Appalachia and then finally centered on Beaver County, it took four years for the company to make the final investment decision.
Since 2012 — at a cost of between $6 billion and $10 billion and a peak of between 8,000 and 9,000 workers at one time — Shell and its contractors have transformed the site into a state-of-the-art petrochemical plant.