Oct 15, 2014 4 min read

The enormous output of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale has a lot of companies looking to use the fuel for a plethora of applications that could create a manufacturing renaissance in the tri-state region.

On a day in which the U.S. Energy Information Administration announced the Marcellus natural gas production is projected to reach more than 16 million cubic feet per day next month, up 217,000 cubic feet from a month earlier, several presenters at the Penn State Natural Gas Utilization Conference in Southpointe offered insights on how the gas could be used to create jobs in manufacturing here.

David Peebles, vice president of ASCENT – Appalachian Shale Cracker Enterprise LLC – which is supported by its parent company, Odebrecht, discussed the company’s proposed ethane cracker for the Parkersburg, W.Va., area that would convert ethane into ethylene, the building block for chemicals and plastics.

While the massive project is in the planning stages, Peebles said his company is having success in securing long-term ethane supply contracts with major producers in the region. He added he’s been encouraged by the amount of infrastructure being developed that would deliver the feedstock to the plant.

But Peebles stressed planning a project of the scope of a cracker is a long-term commitment.

“We are in a very deliberate process,” he said, noting that today he would meet with representatives of 25 different labor unions as part of Odebrecht’s assessment of labor needed for the project.

The other side of accomplishing the long-term goal of the project – to bring chemical and plastics manufacturing to the region – will require the research universities in the tri-state area, from Carnegie Mellon to Case Western, West Virginia and Penn State, to work with major manufacturers to determine new and innovative uses for plastics.

“We need them to find out what Procter & Gamble and Honda are doing” in looking for new uses for plastics in their production, Peebles said.

During a section on innovations and research opportunities stemming from the region’s natural gas output, representatives from Penn State’s Institute for Natural Gas Research and the Strategic Center for Natural Gas & Oil at the National Energy Technology Lab in Morgantown, W.Va., described some of the projects in progress at their institutions.

But all of Wednesday’s presenters agreed there are many opportunities here.

While Odebrecht’s cracker project was announced after Shell Oil announced a proposed ethane cracker for Beaver County, presenters on Thursday’s dais said there is room for both operations, each of which has been estimated to cost around $4 billion.

At the outset of the discussion, Keith Burdette, West Virginia’s secretary of commerce, and Patrick Henderson, energy executive for Gov. Tom Corbett, noted that the projects aren’t competing with each other.

“If this is a competition, it’s between the Appalachian region and the Gulf Coast,” where a number of ethane-cracking plants already exist, Burdette said.

Henderson said Pennsylvania expects to learn whether Shell will commit to the Beaver County project by early next year.

During a 45-minute discussion with international manufacturers, Jason Hoover, representing engineering giant Siemens, noted that the German-based company sees major opportunities in the United States because of the shale revolution.

He said Siemens, which is a $20 billion company in the United States, employing more than 50,000 people here, manufactures the world’s most efficient gas turbine for gas-fired power plants, adding that Siemens’ technologies supply one-third of the country’s energy needs.

As for manufacturing, he said Siemens has created software for factory design and simulation to create modern production sites that have optimum efficiency to compete globally.

The company also has donated the software to universities to enable students to learn to apply efficient design.

According to Hoover, Siemens’ goals “are to improve manufacturing in the U.S. using natural gas as a backbone and to build our skills in the workforce to compete globally.”