News and information on Shell Plc
Federal, state agencies probing Shell’s Falcon ethane pipeline after whistleblowers’ allegations
Early last year, Pennsylvania’s top environmental official tried to raise an alarm at the highest level of the federal agency responsible for pipeline safety.
“I write to you regarding a very serious public safety matter for Pennsylvania,” the letter from Patrick McDonnell, secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection, began.
Shell Pennsylvania petchems project 70% complete, operational in 2022: spokesman
New York — Shell Chemical’s $6 billion petrochemical complex in Pennsylvania is now more than 70% complete and projected to be operational sometime in 2022, a company spokesman said March 12.”
On a daily basis workers are commissioning major pieces of equipment within our infrastructure units – a phased process that will continue until start-up” said the spokesman, Curtis Smith, in an email. “That includes connecting pipes and wiring that will eventually loop and extend for hundreds of miles along the site’s 386 acres,” he said.
Sixty-one new COVID-19 cases were reported at Beaver County’s cracker plant this week, bringing the total number since March to 335.
CHRISSY SUTTLES | BEAVER COUNTY TIMES: 12 Dec 2020
POTTER TWP. — Coronavirus cases continue to grow at Shell Chemicals’ ethane cracker plant site as COVID-19’s third wave hammers the region.
Sixty-one new virus cases were reported at Beaver County’s petrochemical complex this week, bringing the total number since March to 335. Since mid-November, total cases have tripled.
Shell’s Pennsylvania Ethane Cracker Completes 70% Construction
Zacks Equity Research
Royal Dutch Shell plc. (RDS.A – Free Report) said that its petrochemical complex of several billion dollars in Western Pennsylvania is about 70% complete and in the process to enter service in the early 2020s. The news was disclosed by Hilary Mercer, vice president of Shell Polymers via an online presentation at Shale Insight 2020 conference.
Currently under construction, the plant is in Beaver County, about 48 km northwest of Pittsburgh, and will be self-sustained with its natural gas power plant and water treatment facility. The plant’s costs are estimated to be $6-$10 billion, where ethane will be transformed into plastic feedstock. The facility is equipped to produce 1.5 million metric tons per year (“mmty”) of ethylene and 1.6 mmty of polyethylene, two important constituents of plastics.
Why The Oil Industry’s $400 Billion Bet On Plastics Could Backfire
Energy Sept 5, 2020Key takeaways:
The COVID-19 pandemic and accelerating green growth around the world have eviscerated many of the oil industry’s dogmas: that renewables would suffer from high costs, that governments would slow-walk environmental commitments, that investors would continue to reward long-term bets on oil with generous market values.
But one nugget of wisdom has survived everything the market has thrown at it, and now oil companies like ExxonMobil and Shell are wagering billions on it: that the world’s demand for plastics is still growing, with no end in sight.
The Guardian: ‘War on plastic’ could strand oil industry’s £300bn investment
Major oil firms plan to grow plastic supply to counter impact of shift against fossil fuels
Jillian Ambrose: Fri 4 Sep 2020 06.00 BST
The war on plastic waste could scupper the oil industry’s multi-billion dollar bet that the world will continue to need more fossil fuels to help make the petrochemicals used in plastics, according to a new report.
Major oil companies, including Saudi Aramco and Royal Dutch Shell, plan to spend about $400bn (£300bn) to help grow the supply of virgin plastics by a quarter over the next five years, to compensate for the impact of electric vehicles and clean energy technologies on demand for fossil fuels.
Big Oil’s Petrochemical Bet Is A Risky One
By Tsvetana Paraskova – Aug 19, 2020, 5:00 PM CDT
Petrochemicals are expected to underpin global oil demand growth in the future as growth in transportation fuels demand is set to slow with the increased use of electric vehicles, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in March in its annual Oil 2020 report with projections until 2025. But are petrochemicals really profitable?
“Petrochemical feedstocks LPG/ethane and naphtha will drive around half of all oil products demand growth, helped by continued rising plastics demand and cheap natural gas liquids in North America,” the IEA said in March when the COVID-19 pandemic was already upending global oil demand growth projections for this year.
THE GUARDIAN: Big corporations accused of driving environmental and health inequalities in black and brown communities through toxic and climate-changing pollution are also funding powerful police groups in major US cities, according to a new investigation.
Some of America’s largest oil and gas companies, private utilities, and financial institutions that bankroll fossil fuels also back police foundations…
Shell is one of the biggest fossil fuel companies in the world, and is currently building a huge ethane cracker plant near Pittsburgh, which advocates warn could turn Appalachia into the next so-called Cancer Alley – a corridor of Louisiana refineries, where Shell is also a major polluter. Shell is a “featured partner” of the New Orleans police foundation and a sponsor of the Houston police’s mounted patrol.
In a recent town hall, the current project director of the Pennsylvania tax dodge, suggested the construction was 60% complete? WTF?
At least he is not to blame, he was saddled with the errors and over promises of AR, who landed a holding position as “VP HSE”, doing “TFA”, prior to a new position that seems also completely invented … and purposefulessness.
Can’t we just move helpless & hopeless leaders out of the organization?
Unless another senior leader is worried about his role in yet another profitless folly?
BY FRANK ESPOSITO: JAN 5, 2020
Shell Chemical says the development of a major plastics and petrochemicals complex under construction near Pittsburg remains “important” to its overall global effort, despite a report that questioned its viability.
In an email to Plastics News, Michael Marr, Shell business integration lead, responded by saying that Shell’s chemicals business at Monaca, PA., “enjoys strong fundamentals” and that the Pennsylvania project “is an important part of our global effort to build-out new business models that will allow Shell to participate and thrive in the energy transition.”
One closely-watched project already under construction in western Pennsylvania faces heightened risk as well. Royal Dutch Shell is building a gargantuan ethane cracker in the heart of the Appalachian shale gas region… “The complex is likely to be less profitable than expected and face an extended period of financial distress.”
A Perfect Storm For Petrochemicals
The oil majors have made huge bets on plastics and petrochemicals in recent years, but those investments look increasingly shaky following the COVID-19 pandemic and economic downturn.
Shell plastics plant Trump touted faces oversupply risks: Energy institute report
(Updated: )
WASHINGTON: A massive Pennsylvania plastics project that President Donald Trump touted during a visit last year faces risks of oversupply and a low price outlook for the materials, a report by an institute that examines energy issues said on Thursday.
The Pennsylvania Petrochemical Complex plant in Beaver County, owned by Shell, has been promoted by some as an economic savior in a region still suffering from the demise of steel industry in the 1980s.
Andy Sheehan: March 18, 2020 at 3:59 pm
MONACA, Pa. (KDKA) – Union officials say Shell is temporarily shutting down construction at the Beaver County cracker plant after workers raised concerns related to the potential spread of coronavirus.
On Wednesday, Beaver County Commissioners called on Shell to shut down construction at the multi-billion-dollar cracker plant. Workers had complained of crowded buses and unsanitary conditions.
Workers at the construction site have been reporting a lack of progress on a laundry list of concerns related to the potential spread of COVID-19.
Michael Pooler in Paris: 12 Feb 2020
Along the banks of the Ohio River in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, giant cranes whir overhead as thousands of construction workers toil away at what will be one of the largest plastic factories in the world.
The multibillion dollar Royal Dutch Shell plant, on the site of an old zinc smelter in the American rust-belt, is the biggest investment in the state since the second world war…
At a time when the oil industry is gripped by fears that demand for petrol will collapse in an era of electric vehicles, many hydrocarbon producers are betting on petrochemicals — and in particular, plastics — to fill the gap. But doubts are emerging about the wisdom of a huge expansion in capacity that will leave the world awash in products that can take hundreds of years to decay.
Shell must grapple with its own existential crisis: How should a company that generates most of its profits by serving the world’s enormous appetite for oil navigate a long-term future in which shifting political and economic tides threaten to make fossil fuels obsolete?A peculiar theme park in the Hague celebrates the history of the Netherlands through a series of miniature models. The Madurodam features little canals, old-fashioned windmills, tiny tulips and, amid it all, an homage to Royal Dutch Shell, the oil giant that is the biggest company in the country and, by revenue, the second largest publicly traded oil-and-gas company in the world. There’s a Shell drilling platform, a Shell gas station and a Shell natural-gas field, complete with a drilling rig. The display is at once odd–energy infrastructure in a children’s theme park–and entirely fitting: Shell has been, for decades, one of the most powerful players both in Dutch politics and on the global economic stage.
HOUSTON, Nov. 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Today Shell announced it has successfully made high-end chemicals using a liquid feedstock made from plastic waste. The technique, known as pyrolysis, is considered a breakthrough for hard-to-recycle plastics and advances Shell’s ambition to use one million tonnes of plastic waste a year in its global chemicals plants by 2025.
“This makes sense for the environment and our business,” said Thomas Casparie, Executive Vice President of Shell’s global chemicals business. “We want to take waste plastics that are tough to recycle by traditional methods and turn them back into chemicals – creating a circle. These chemicals will meet our customers’ growing demands for high quality and sustainable products.”
EBOOK TITLE: “SIR HENRI DETERDING AND THE NAZI HISTORY OF ROYAL DUTCH SHELL” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON
EBOOK TITLE: “JOHN DONOVAN, SHELL’S NIGHTMARE: MY EPIC FEUD WITH THE UNSCRUPULOUS OIL GIANT ROYAL DUTCH SHELL” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.
EBOOK TITLE: “TOXIC FACTS ABOUT SHELL REMOVED FROM WIKIPEDIA: HOW SHELL BECAME THE MOST HATED BRAND IN THE WORLD” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.
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