By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, June 6 – Shell has preliminary plans to build a large ethylene plant in the Appalachian region of the US based on ethane from natural gas produced from the Marcellus shale.
The company hasn’t identified a site for the plant, which would include production of derivatives yet to be determined. “The leading option is polyethylene,” Shell said in a news release.
The news release treated the plans as indefinite and didn’t report capacity. But it described the prospective ethane cracker as “world-scale.”
Shell entered the Marcellus shale play last year with its acquisition of privately owned East Resources of Warrendale, Pa., for $4.7 billion (OGJ, June 7, 2010, Newsletter). Its leasehold in the play is now about 700,000 acres.
Shell’s US ethylene capacities are 1.18 million tonnes/year at Deer Park, Tex., and 1.45 million tonnes/year at Norco, La.
