In a world full of plastics, Shell rises to manufacture more
When completed, its facility northwest of Pittburgh will be fed by pipelines stretching hundreds of miles
MONACA, PA.— The 386-acre property looks like a giant Lego set rising from the banks of the Ohio River. It is one of the largest active construction projects in the United States, employing more than 5,000 people.
When completed, the facility will be fed by pipelines stretch- ing hundreds of miles across Appalachia. It will have its own rail system with 3,300 freight cars. And it will produce annually annually more than a million tons of something that many people argue the world needs less of: plastic.
As concern grows about plastic debris in the oceans and recycling recycling continues to falter in the United States, the produc- tion of new plastic is booming. The plant that Royal Dutch Shell is building about 40 kilometres northwest of Pittsburgh will create tiny pellets that can be turned into items like phone cases, auto parts and food packaging, all of which will be around long after they have served their purpose.
The plant is one of more than a dozen that are being built or have been proposed around the world by petrochemical com- panies like Exxon Mobil and Dow, including several in nearby Ohio and West Virginia and on the Gulf Coast. And after decades of American industrial jobs heading overseas, the rise of the petrochemical sector is creating excitement. On Aug.13, U.S. President Donald Trump toured the Shell plant.
“Where we are coming from is that plastic, in most of its forms, is good and it serves to be good for humanity,” said Hilary Mercer, who is overseeing the construction project for Shell.
The boom is driven partly by plastic’s popularity as a versatile and inexpensive material that keeps potato chips fresh and makes cars lighter. But in parts of the Appalachian region, the increase is also being fuelled by an overabundance of natural gas. It has been about 15 years since hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, took hold in Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, which sits atop the huge gas reserve of the Marcellus Shale. But natural gas prices have collapsed and profit must be found elsewhere, namely the natural gas byproduct ethane, which is unleashed during fracking and can be made into polyethylene, a common form of plastic.
This is a place where, right now, plastic makes sense to many people: to the labour union gaining new members; to the world’s third-largest company struggling with low oil prices; and to the former government officials who, in seeking to create jobs, offered Shell one of the largest tax breaks in state history. But any short-term good could have long-term costs. Shell says much of the plastic from the plant can be used to create fuel-efficient cars and medical devices. But the industry acknowledges that some of the world’s waste-management systems are unable to keep up with other forms of plastic, like water bottles, grocery bags and f food containers being discard- ed by consumers on the move. Studies have detected plastic fibres everywhere — in the stomachs of sperm whales, in tap water and in table salt.
A researcher in Britain says plastic may help define the most recent layer of the earth’s crust because it takes so long to break down and there is so much of it.
“Plastic really doesn’t go aaaway,” said Roland Geyer, a pro- f fessor of industrial ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It just accumulates and ends up in the wrong places. And we just don’t know the long-term implications of having all this plastic everywhere in the natural environment. It is like this giant global experiment and we can’t just pull the plug if it goes wrong.” ‘Part of a journey’ The roots of Shell’s sleek, ultramodern plant date back hundreds of millions of years, when the area was occupied by a wide inland sea. Over time, the earth shifted and the sea was covered by rock, which compressed the dead organisms and sediment that had settled on its watery bottom into rich layers of hydrocarbons, including those that make up natural gas.
Mercer has spent 32 years travelling the world for Shell — in southern Iraq and in eastern Russia — helping turn those hy- drocarbons deep within the Earth into energy. These days, Mercer, an English-born, Oxford-educated engineer, works out of a red-brick building in Beaver, Pa.
The plant Mercer has come here to build is “as big as you get,” she said. When finished, Shell’s cracker plant — named for the chemical reaction of “cracking” gas molecules into the building blocks of plastic — will consume vast quantities of ethane pumped from wells across Pennsylvania into an enormous furnace. The superheated gas is then cooled, forming solid pellets about the size of grains of Arborio rice. The pro- cess takes about 20 hours.
In Mercer’s view, this is a positive development for the environment. Creating more plastic, she says, helps reduce carbon emissions by creating lighter and more efficient cars and airplanes. “You have plastic in wind turbines. You have plastic in solar panels.”
She added: “The ability to do those renewable things relies to some extent on the plastics we produce and the chemicals that we produce. I don’t see a con- tradiction. I see it as part of a journey.”
Shell’s journey into plastics was driven by a need to gener-ate profits at a time when its primary business — oil and gas production — struggles with persistently low prices. It is also away for the energy industry to hedge against declining gasoline consumption as cars become more efficient or powered by electricity. A big demand for plastic comes from auto manufacturers and for makers of consumer goods like the ones displayed in a mock grocery store in the lobby of Shell’s Pennsylvania offices: plastic cups, diapers and paper towel rolls wrapped in plastic.
There’s also a stack of brochures in the lobby, titled the Shell Polymers “Constitution,” that read: “We are called to Beaver Valley by the desire to be part of something larger than ourselves — to leave a legacy of care, innovation and success for future generations.”
Mercer said the problem with plastic is not its production but improper disposal of it. “We passionately believe in recycling.” she said.
Shell is involved in a broad industry effort to clean up the world’s largest sources of plas- tic waste. And in Beaver County, Shell recently donated money to extend the hours of the local recycling centre, and it supports other initiatives that the company believes will con- tribute to a “circular economy.” But a circular economy has not yet taken hold in Beaver. Like many areas around the country, the county has had to limit the t type of plastic packaging it can accept for recycling because relatively few buyers want to repurpose it.
“We are looking for long-term solutions right now,” a spokesperson for the recycling centre said. ‘Where you want to be’ It was a golden autumn afternoon in Pittsburgh, sunny and mild. The Steelers were in town playing at Heinz Field, and Gov. TTTom Corbett got two box-seat tickets to the game.
The governor’s guest at the game in October 2012 was a Shell executive, who was helping to decide where the company nncompany would locate its giant crack- er plant. Corbett took the executive uuexecutive down to the field to meet some of the players. Then the governor walked him out to midfield to stand on the Steelers’ yellow and black logo.
“I told him, ‘This is where you want to be,’” Corbett recalled.
Shell agreed, and was offered a tax break that was projected to save the company an estimated $1.6 billion. Corbett, a Republican, said the plastics plant wwwould bolster communities in aaan area devastated by the col- lapse of the steel industry in the 1980s, when the unemployment rate hit 28 per cent.
“Did you know there is a Steelers bar in Rome?” Corbett asked in a phone interview. “The reason the Steelers travel so well is because when steel died, many people moved away.”
Corbett said he believed the Shell plant was only the beginning of the state’s plastics boom. He envisions manufacturers tt coming to Beaver Coun- ttty to be closer to the source of t the raw plastic. His successor, Tom Wolf, a Democrat, has been courting more petrochemical development.
“We are rebuilding the economy,” mm said Corbett, who left of- f fice in 2015 after one term.