HOUSTON – There’s a silent battle being waged by no fewer than three groups trying to secure customers and/or funding for underground natural gas liquids storage in the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.
With Shell Chemical pushing hard to have its world scale ethane cracker 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh operational by the end of 2020, Thailand’s PTT Global Chemical (PTTGC) and partner Daelim Industrial on a path to sanction their multi-billion-dollar cracker proposed for southeast Ohio, liquids storage has been atop the wish list for both projects.
Mountaineer – Energy Storage Ventures and Appalachian Development Group each have announced individual projects, in Ohio and West Virginia, respectively.
A third storage proposal, first put forth two months ago during a conference in northeast Ohio, garnered more discussion from a top company executive last week in Houston.
John Swearingen, executive vice president Logistics and Storage, talked at length about midstreamer MPLX’s proposed Hopedale NGL Caverns, located on MPLX property in Harrison County, Ohio.
Already the site of a MPLX fractionator, told an audience of 500-plus at last week’s initial EnergyxPortCon, sponsored by RBN Energy, his liquids storage project in scheduled for operation in 2021 – first among the three storage projects. (Kallanish Energy was in attendance at the inaugural EnergyxPortcon.)
“Capacity of the Hopedale NGL Caverns will be more than 5 million barrels,” Swearingen said.
A coring well has been completed. The MPLX design is to store ethane, butane and propane in individual salt caverns. The NGL fractionation site will also be built out.
Another big plus for the Hopedale site is it’s located in the middle of all major NGL pipelines in the Tri-State region: Utopia, Atex, Teppco, Mariner East 2, Falcon and Cornerstone lines.
The pipelines could take stored Hopedale liquids to Sarnia, Ontario, Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania, and the Gulf Coast.
