PTTGC strikes deal with storage company for southeast Ohio petrochemical project

Houston — PTTGC America has struck a deal with an energy storage company to provide infrastructure for a petrochemical complex planned for southeast Ohio, the company announced July 22.

PTTGC America, the US arm of Thailand's PTT Global Chemical, said it has forged an agreement with a subsidiary of Energy Storage Ventures to develop a $250 million natural gas liquids storage and transportation facility for the proposed complex. The facility would be the first underground NGL storage site in the Marcellus and Utica shale formations.

Under the deal, subsidiary Mountaineer NGL Storage will develop underground salt caverns for NGL storage on a company-owned, 200-acre site about eight miles south of site for PTTGC America's proposed complex.

The storage project is slated to be developed in two phases, with multiple caverns able to hold about 500,000 barrels of propane, butane, ethane and ethylene. Mountaineer has necessary permits to launch the first phase of the project, providing up to 1.5 million barrels of storage, that will take up to three years to build. The second phase could add an additional 1.5 million barrels of storage, with more expansions possible depending on market demand.

Mountaineer has been planning its project since at least 2016. The region has a salt formation, the Salina, in the strata that could be hollowed out with brine for NGL storage caverns.

Mont Belvieu, Texas, the top NGL storage hub, has about 213 million barrels of underground storage. Second is Conway, Kansas, with about 73 million barrels.

Storage deal a step toward petrochemical complex FID

PTTGC America CEO Toasaporn Boonyapipat said in a statement July 22 that the impending partnership with Mountaineer will bring the company a step closer to a final investment decision, which has been repeatedly delayed.

On July 14, PTTGC America announced that its former partner in the petrochemical complex, South Korea's Daelim, had withdrawn from the project. Boonyapipat said the complex remained a top priority, and the company was seeking a new partner while working toward an FID.

Daelim had signed on to the project in February 2018, and the companies had planned to make an FID by the end of that year. More recently, PTTGC America had aimed to make an FID in the first half of 2020, but coronavirus pandemic-related delays pushed that to late 2020 or early 2021.

According to permitting documents, PTTGC's project includes a 1.5 million mt/year cracker, two 350,000 mt/year high density polyethylene plants, a 450,000 mt/year HDPE plant and a 450,000 mt/year linear low density PE plant.