Bryce Custer, one of the leading commercial realtors in the Appalachian Basin, weighed in Marathon Petroleum’s decision to evaluate building a storage hub near Hopedale in Harrison County, Ohio.
The possibility of an underground storage facility in Harrison County is great news for Ohio River Valley and the Appalachian Basin.
Here’s the news about it.
Ohio-based Marathon Petroleum is exploring the possibility of an underground liquids storage facility in eastern Ohio’s Utica Shale.
The company is looking at utilizing underground salt caverns for ethane, butane and propane storage, said Jason Stechschulte, commercial development manager for Marathon Pipe Line LLC.
The site would be near the company’s Hopedale fractionation facility in Harrison County.
The company last year conducted core sampling and the site has potential, he said Thursday at the day-long Utica Midstream conference sponsored by the Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce and Shale Directories. The event drew roughly 130 people to Walsh University in North Canton.
Custer commented, “The construction of the underground storage facilities is a multi-billion dollar commitment which requires considerable resources.
Marathon is talking with potential customers, but there are no firm plans, price estimates or timetables, Stechschulte said. Any timetable would be driven by customer interest and permitting, he said.
He described the plan as a “multi-year project.” No applications have been filed for the project, except for the coring work done in 2018.
What the company is envisioning is a storage facility that would provide a solution for the entire industry in the Appalachian Basin, he said. Natural gas liquids would be stored under pressure with the ethane, butane and propane all being segregated in different salt caverns, he said.
The facility would be close to numerous pipelines in the area where Ohio, West Virginia and western Pennsylvania come together.
Storage is needed as Shell Appalachia continues to build its ethane cracker plant at Monaca, Pennsylvania, northwest of Pittsburgh.
Waiting on PTT
PTT Global Chemical is still looking at building a similar cracker at Dilles Bottom in Ohio’s Belmont County. A final investment decision has been expected for some time.
A private company, Colorado-based Mountaineer NGL Storage, hopes to develop a storage facility in salt caverns at Clarington in Ohio’s Monroe County. It would be designed to handle up to 3.5 million barrels of natural gas liquids.
Natural gas liquids are also flowing via pipelines to eastern Pennsylvania for export.
In other news, Marathon Pipeline is completing the finishing touches to expanding its Rio Pipeline to move Utica Shale liquids from Lima, Ohio, to Robinson, Illinois.
That required adding three pumping stations on the 250-mile, eight-inch line. Stechschulte told the audience the pipeline will move roughly 55,000 barrels per day, starting within the next 10 days.
The company is also working to move Utica normal butane and isobutane to refineries and storage in the Midwest, a project that will be completed by mid-2020.
The two projects together will cost Marathon about $150 million, he said.
The company is also looking at a possible arrangement to move Utica liquids from Cadiz and Scio in eastern Ohio, to Bells Run on the Ohio River for river transport, he said. That might be an arranged in cooperation with EnLink Midstream.