There’s been a lot of hullabaloo over Chesapeake Energy Corp.’s
announcement that it plans to ship at least 75,000 barrels of
ethane from its Appalachian operations to Texas, where the
ethane can be used in the Gulf Coast petrochemical industry. The
problem: West Virginia officials desperately want a billion-
dollar petrochemical facility known as a cracker to be
constructed in the state. A local cracker would take advantage
of the region’s massive natural gas reserves and create hundreds
if not thousands of jobs. Crackers use byproducts removed from
natural gas before the gas is burned in homes. One of those
chemicals is ethane, a key ingredient in plastics. Here’s a good
explanation of ethane, the chemical and the business. The worry
is that Chesapeake’s deal has robbed the Appalachian region of
ethane. To understand this debate there are a couple of things
to keep in mind. We report on some of these points in an article
titled Chesapeake Energy’s ethane deal not ‘cracker killer’, but
let’s go over them in a