Mariner East 2 pipeline approaching final approval

MARCUS HOOK >> On Monday night, Middletown Township Council will vote on an ordinance to grant Sunoco Logistics easements on seven parcels of public lands, which include Sleighton Park, Linvilla Orchards, open space in Hillcrest and Old Mill Point communities, as well the much debated proposed pipe location near Glenwood Elementary School.

For Sunoco Logistics, which is heading up the $3 billion project in Marcus Hook, the final steps before building pipeline that will run clear across Pennsylvania will be gaining the easements necessary to lay the pipe.

Promising over 2,000 labor jobs, and intending to turn Marcus Hook into an East Coast energy hub, the pushback from residents are not concerning the massive industrial boom, but rather public safety.

Last week, Democratic candidate for the 9th District Senate seat, Marty Molloy, held a press conference aiming to represent the worries of residents in the Middletown area.

“Coming this close to a school where some of your kids might go to is not OK,” Molloy said. “I’m asking us to slow the process down so we can be thoughtful about public safety.”

However, Molloy faced argument from local residents who viewed his better-safe-than-sorry stance as an affront to the labor union workers tasked with the massive project that one union leader called “the biggest project Pennsylvania has seen since Limerick,” the nuclear power generation station

“Coming this close to a school where some of your kids might go to is not OK. I’m asking us to slow the process down so we can be thoughtful about public safety.” — Marty Molloy, Democratic candidate for the 9th District Senate seat

that took 15 years and billion to complete.

“Sunoco Logistics Mariner East 2 will be built with state-of -the-art technology to ensure the highest regard for safety of the communities it runs through,” said Bill Adams, president of the Local 654 branch of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, $7 who challenged claims.

Yet, the concerns of the Middletown Coalition for Community Safety, a nonpartisan group of parents and residents concerned with the expansion of Mariner East 2, which will include 11.4 miles of new pipeline in Delaware County, have called for more risk assessment studies.

“These products remain liquid under high pressure, but in the event of a leak, vaporize upon contact with air, forming an invisible, odorless, and extremely combustible gas cloud,” the MCCS said in a statement.

In 2011, the shutdown of the Sunoco Marcus Hook refinery put 490 people out of work and ended a 109-year-old tradition on Delaware County’s riverfront.

“I worked in the Marcus Hook facility when they were shutting down, I worked at Monroe at the time they shut these places Molloy’s

“Sunoco Logistics Mariner East 2 will be built with state-of-the -art technology to ensure the highest regard for safety of the communities it runs through.” — Bill Adams, president of the Local 654 branch of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers

down, I’ve seen the reallife devastation of people, grown men with well-up tears in the their eyes, because they were told in a firehouse they were shutting down,” said Anthony Gallagher, Business Manager for the Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 420.

But, the grandiose plans to convert the facility from a petroleum refinery to a massive natural gas hub took shape.

I can tell you there’s a whole new feeling in the trades, as a lifelong resident of Delaware County, that we have because of this project,” Gallagher said. “It gives us new revitalization, in our spirit too, most importantly.”

“There’s a tremendous amount of opportunity.”

At Marcus Hook, natural gas liquids (NGLs) are already being stored and sold locally, regionally and into export tanker from four docks.

When Sunoco began digging up sections of pipeline that used to carry petroleum from east to west across the southern part of Pennsylvania, the goal was to repurpose it, reverse the flow, and call it the Mariner East 1.

However, instead of carrying petroleum from east to west, the pipeline would carry propane, ethane and methane from the Marcellus Shale region to the via the truck or refinery’s

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RICK KAUFFMAN — DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA During the first phase of the Mariner East 2 project, labor workers in steamfitting, construction and other jobs are upgrading the complex in Marcus Hook to house the of natural gas liquids once the pipeline is in place.

RICK KAUFFMAN — DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA From inside the Sunoco Logistics plant at the Marcus Hook Industrial Complex where inbound shipments of natural gas liquids are separated, stored and shipped.