Low prices for natural gas and related liquids are forcing Chesapeake Energy Corp. to cut into Ohio operations.

...

The company needs to maintain two drilling rigs in order to hold on to its leased acreage in eastern Ohio.

http://www.ohio.com/news/break-news/chesapeake-energy-to-scale-back-utica-shale-drilling-in-eastern-ohio-1.589553

Unfortunately no increase in drilling taxes in the latest Ohio budget. I think that one day we'll regret allowing our land to be pillaged and to get so little in return, particularly considering the potential costs. All of the highest-paying and corporate headquarters remain out-of-state.

 

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/06/16/severance-tax.html

Unfortunately no increase in drilling taxes in the latest Ohio budget. I think that one day we'll regret allowing our land to be pillaged and to get so little in return, particularly considering the potential costs. All of the highest-paying and corporate headquarters remain out-of-state.

 

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/06/16/severance-tax.html

 

Fareed Zakaria of CNN ran a segment this past Sunday about the impact of "fracking".  Industry experts said it's becoming much safer for the environment and the economic affects of the job creation and cheap energy are really measurable.  Every single home owner is seeing an average of $800/yr savings on lower priced gas for heating and job creation for this is dramatic.  Add to that how much leverage it's giving the US as we've now become the #1 oil/gas producer in the world, ahead of Russia & Saudi Arabia.  The environmental concerns are legitimate but they are being addressed as the process evolves and the restrictions to protect the environment aren't affecting the cost of extraction.  Which is a good thing.

Unfortunately no increase in drilling taxes in the latest Ohio budget. I think that one day we'll regret allowing our land to be pillaged and to get so little in return, particularly considering the potential costs. All of the highest-paying and corporate headquarters remain out-of-state.

 

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/06/16/severance-tax.html

 

Fareed Zakaria of CNN ran a segment this past Sunday about the impact of "fracking".  Industry experts said it's becoming much safer for the environment and the economic affects of the job creation and cheap energy are really measurable.  Every single home owner is seeing an average of $800/yr savings on lower priced gas for heating and job creation for this is dramatic.  Add to that how much leverage it's giving the US as we've now become the #1 oil/gas producer in the world, ahead of Russia & Saudi Arabia.  The environmental concerns are legitimate but they are being addressed as the process evolves and the restrictions to protect the environment aren't affecting the cost of extraction.  Which is a good thing.

 

Right and I have heard that sales pitch from all of the advertising that the Natural Gas industry does. That said, there's still no reason why severance taxes can't be increased to levels similar to what other states have. Heck, even Texas has higher rates than we do. If there's any wonder why they've got no income tax, it's in part because they appropriately tax their natural resources. Environmental risks aside, which I think will take years to fully appreciate, we're not getting as much out of this deal as we should be. That's to say nothing of the fact still that the best-paying jobs for these operations are located out of state. These are our resources, we can do better.

^I am still baffled why the GOP legislators don't just follow Kasich's lead on this one. A higher severance tax would likely reduce the value of drilling rights, meaning less of a windfall to land owners, but that's not a good reason not to do this. 

 

Has anyone seen an explanation from the legislature why they won't raise the severance tax?

"ZOMG IT'S A TAX NOOOO" --Executive summary of Ohio General Assembly Republican Caucus internal memo on analysis of severance tax

Site of Ohio's potential ethane cracker confirmed

Jun 23, 2015, 2:02pm EDT

Tom Knox

Columbus Business First

 

The communications team at Akron power company FirstEnergy Corp. has played coy about an open secret in the energy sector.

 

Publicly, the company tells reporters its plans to sell the riverside R.E. Burger power plant are premature. But industry sources have said from the beginning that the land will house a proposed ethane cracker plant in Belmont County.

 

Now, an executive for the company has confirmed the site will house the plant if Thailand's PTT Global Chemical Public Co. and Japan's Marubeni Corp. decide to go through with the facility.

 

MORE:

http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/blog/ohio-energy-inc/2015/06/site-of-ohios-potential-ethane-cracker-confirmed.html

Company to build its second $1.1 billion gas-fired power plant near Wellsville in Ohio’s Utica Shale #Akron http://t.co/p9mRJWDiZN

Company to build its second $1.1 billion gas-fired power plant near Wellsville in Ohios Utica Shale #Akron http://t.co/p9mRJWDiZN

Talk about efficiency!  21 permanent jobs are created from these plants which deliver natural gas to 880,000 homes!

Ohio’s Utica Shale development grows by $5.7 billion or 20.4 percent since last spring

By Bob Downing

Beacon Journal staff writer

Published: November 18, 2015 - 07:31 PM

 

Ohio’s Utica Shale has seen an additional $5.7 billion in investment or a 20.4 percent increase since last spring, a Columbus law firm says in a new report.

 

The shale industry has invested $33.7 billion in Ohio, according to the report from Bricker & Eckler LLP, which tracks the industry.

 

Ohio’s shale development is growing despite low commodity prices and a natural gas glut that have hurt some drilling companies.

 

The biggest factors in Ohio’s Utica Shale boom are continuing development of needed infrastructure including pipelines and natural gas-processing plants, plus development of new natural gas-fired power plants that will generate electricity, said attorney Matt Warnock, partner and co-chair of Bricker & Eckler’s oil and gas industry group.

 

“The infrastructure continues to get built out,” he said.

 

MORE:

http://www.ohio.com/business/utica/ohio-s-utica-shale-development-grows-by-5-7-billion-or-20-4-percent-since-last-spring-1.641593

Study says locally produced ethane will spur growth in plastics.

 

http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2015/11/utica_shale_boom_moving_closer.html#incart_river_home

OPEC Unsure How It Can ‘Live Together’ With Shale Oil

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-22/opec-s-el-badri-doesn-t-know-how-to-live-together-with-shale-oil

New Ohio shale oil pipeline to supply Marathon's Canton refinery

http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2016/04/new_ohio_shale_oil_pipeline_to.html

Performance Technologies will shut Canton facility

April 21, 2016 UPDATED 13 HOURS AGO

By DAN SHINGLER 

 

Oklahoma-based Performance Technologies will close its facility in Canton and lay off 87 workers there, apparently due to the slowdown in shale gas drilling in Ohio.

 

The company informed the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services on April 13 that it “will be shutting down most of its operations at 1575 Trump Ave. NE … apart from a small crew to maintain the buildings.”

 

The company provides pressure pumping services to shale gas drillers and said its announcement is “due to the continued industry downturn.”

 

MORE:

http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20160421/NEWS/160429956/performance-technologies-will-shut-canton-facility

Paul J. Gough ‏@PBT_Paul  1h1 hour ago

Breaking: Shell CEO confirms that it will build multibilliondollar chemical plant in Beaver County. Story soon at @PghBizTimes website.

Yup the Franklin Project has been given full funding!!

 

It uses natural gas from fracking to make plastics.  If down the road fracking becomes more expensive due to regulation (I hope) the facility can still run on other sources of natural gas

Ohio drillers could cash in from Shell facility

June 12, 2016 UPDATED 2 DAYS AGO

By DAN SHINGLER 

 

While regional natural gas prices remain among the lowest in the world, Ohio drillers got some promising news this month about the construction of pipelines and, more significantly, a big ethane cracker.

 

Royal Dutch Shell finally said it has decided to move forward with its $4 billion ethane cracker near the Ohio River in Beaver County, Pa.

 

The massive facility is expected to employ 6,000 during three or four years of construction and 600 to run it afterward. But it has the potential to impact both drillers and Northeast Ohio’s plastics and specialty chemical industries in far bigger ways, which is why economic developers and the oil and gas industry have both seen getting one built here as the ultimate victory in exploiting the state’s newfound shale resources.

 

The American Chemistry Council was quick to applaud the announcement, which the group’s president and CEO, Cal Dooley, called “another sign that a renaissance in American chemistry is underway. … Our competitive edge will mean new jobs and exports and a stronger manufacturing sector for years to come.”

 

Shell’s facility would take massive amounts of ethane — the chief product of Utica and Marcellus shale gas wells, aside from methane — and turn it into ethylene. Ethylene, in turn, is used to make polyethylene. They are two of the chief ingredients of a low-cost plastics and specialty chemical industry.

 

“Ethane, a natural gas liquid, is the U.S. chemical industry’s main feedstock,” according to the ACC.

 

For places like Akron and other parts of Northeast Ohio, which are laden with businesses and technology institutions dedicated to the chemical and plastics industries, the development of Shell’s cracker would have about the same effect as moving their source of raw materials from the Gulf Coast to a site closer than Pittsburgh, economists say.

 

MORE:

http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20160612/NEWS/160619957/ohio-drillers-could-cash-in-from-shell-facility

Ohio ethane cracker plant closer to reality on former FirstEnergy property

Posted on July 12, 2017 at 2:20 PM

By John Funk, The Plain Dealer

 

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Thai petrochemical company considering Southeast Ohio as the future site of $6 billion ethane "cracker" plant has bought a portion of the land it will need.

 

PTT Global Chemical America has paid FirstEnergy Corp $13.8 million for a 168-acre parcel overlooking the Ohio River in Dillies Bottom, an unincorporated area in Belmont County.

 

MORE:

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2017/07/ohio_ethane_cracker_plant_clos.html

Proposed $5B ethane cracker plant lands another incentive from JobsOhio

 

Another incentive from JobsOhio will help further site work for a $5 billion ethane cracker plant in Appalachia, and the developers behind the project expect to make a final decision on the project's future soon.  JobsOhio executed a $20 million revitalization grant in January for further site work around the proposed Belmont County plant.  Thailand-based developer PTT Global Chemical America is teaming up with South Korea-based Daelim Industrial Co. on the proposed 1.5 million tons-per-year plant that promises thousands of construction jobs and hundreds of full-time workers.

 

While the development team says it hasn't yet committed to the project, the incentives will help with additional site preparation work at the site as it continues to evaluate its viability.  The complex would be the second-largest such facility in the United States.

 

The team behind it expects to make a final investment devision in the first half of the year, spokesman Dan Williamson said.  "This grant provides the PTT/Daelim team with needed resources to continue engineering work and site preparation that must be done in coming months," Williamson said. ... The project's long development cycle inched forward last year.  Last summer, JobsOhio granted $30 million to the project for site work.

 

MORE:  https://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/news/2020/02/10/proposed-5b-ethane-cracker-plant-lands-another.html

Petrochemical hub along Ohio River in Belmont County faces indefinite delay

 

It's been years since a massive petrochemical hub was proposed along the Ohio River in Belmont County, creating what would be the biggest economic-development project in Ohio with thousands of construction jobs and a couple hundred permanent jobs.

 

Yet the company behind the project, Thailand-based PTT Global Chemical of America, has never formally committed to building on the site even as JobsOhio, the state's economic-development arm, has paid $70 million to develop the site.  With a lack of a formal commitment, questions continue to surface about the project's future. ... Two companies which had partnered with PTTGCA on the project have backed out.  The latest partner cut ties in July.

( . . . )

Since the inception of the proposal in the mid-2010s, the price of plastic has dropped and there has been a global oversaturation of ethane-ethylene cracker plants and plastics manufacturing.  "The economics do not make sense, which is why PTTGCA has not gone forward," Kathy Hipple, professor of finance at Bard College and former financial analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said during an online forum hosted by the Ohio River Valley Institute.

 

MORE:  https://www.thisweeknews.com/story/business/2021/02/04/petrochemical-hub-faces-indefinite-delay-market-forces-dont-support-buildout-in-appalachia/4386072001/

Report: Ohio fracking counties saw declines in jobs, population and income

 

A decade earlier, the oil and gas industry was touted as being the savior for the Ohio River valley region, which had weathered the crumbling of the steel industry and watched helplessly as the coal industry declines.  The millions of dollars invested in the Marcellus and Utica region were supposed to translate into local wealth in the form of more jobs, higher incomes and more people moving into the region.

 

However, a new report released Wednesday by the Ohio River Valley Institute - an independent think tank based in Johnstown, Pennsylvania - showed that 22 counties in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia responsible for 90% of Appalachia's oil and gas production saw their share of the nation's jobs, personal income and population all decline.

 

In fact, Ohio fared the worst of the three states examined for economic success.  Seven eastern Ohio counties — Belmont, Carroll, Guernsey, Harrison, Jefferson, Monroe and Noble — were the hardest hit amongst those analyzed, experiencing a net job loss of more than 8% and a population loss of more than 3%.

 

MORE:  https://www.thisweeknews.com/story/business/2021/02/10/ohio-fracking-boom-never-translated-more-jobs-and-growth-report-says/4450698001/

The Ohio counties don't have nearly the product as the deeper parts of Appalachia. The fracking people got everyone's hopes up too far from the core areas where the cheap, easy-to-get stuff is.

A $5 billion dollar facility with a "couple hundred" jobs, once again goes to show that bringing manufacturing back isn't going to be the blue collar employment boon that people hope it will.

18 hours ago, X said:

A $5 billion dollar facility with a "couple hundred" jobs, once again goes to show that bringing manufacturing back isn't going to be the blue collar employment boon that people hope it will.

Refineries have never been big employers; your point works better with GM and their new battery factory in Lordstown and Charter Steel's new mill in Cuyahoga Heights. The jobs counts are low in both places, but what jobs there are are good paying ones.