Shell Chemical begins production at Pennsylvania PE plant

Shell Chemical has begun production at its much-anticipated polyethylene resin complex near Pittsburgh.

Shell officially started production in Monaca, Pa., on Nov. 15. The firm had been sampling PE resin made at the site with potential customers for several months.

"Building this world-class facility is a fantastic achievement and one the team can be proud of," Downstream Director Huibert Vigeveno said in a news release. "It's a showcase of Shell's project delivery expertise."

"With great market access, innovative offers and connected infrastructure, Shell Polymers Monaca is well positioned and ready to serve customers with high-quality, competitive products," he added.

The site will have annual production capacity of about 3.5 billion pounds of PE resin. It's the first major PE manufacturing complex in the Northeastern U.S. and the first U.S. plant built outside of the Gulf Coast in at least 40 years.

Officials said the complex is strategically located within a 700-mile radius of 70 percent of the U.S. PE market. The 384-acre site has contracted most of its natural gas feedstock from the nearby Utica and Marcellus basins.

The advantages of that proximity "are not limited to production," officials said. The site "also offers customers shorter supply chains, which translates to increased flexibility and access to [PE] pellets that can be used in a wide variety of products such as common household goods, consumer and food packaging, as well as industrial and utility products."

They added that the startup "represents an important step in growing Shell's chemicals business as part of its Powering Progress strategy." The firm "is increasingly participating in value chains closer to end-use customers and using advantaged feedstocks to deliver more high value products while reducing exposure to commodity chemicals over time."

Vigeveno said that he "is proud that in delivering this facility we've had a strong and innovative safety focus, invested in the community through employment and education and helped repair and improve the local environment by remediating a brownfield site."

The complex is expected to reach full production rates in the second half of 2023. Construction began in April 2017, but was slowed during 2020 by the Covid-19 pandemic. The plant has two gas phase reactors and one slurry reactor.

High and linear low density PE resins made at the site will serve customers who make commodity and specialty films, pipe, blow-molded containers and injection-molded parts, officials said. The site has 600 full-time employees. Officials said it's created several thousand more local jobs from private industry and public services required for support. At peak construction, the site employed more than 8,500 workers.

Shell's Powering Progress initiative aims to transition the firm to become a net-zero emissions energy business. Shell plans to do so by reducing emissions from operations, from fuels and other energy products sold to customers and by capturing and storing remaining emissions via technology or by balancing them with offsets.

In North America, Shell is working with resin distributors Bamberger Polymers Corp., Genesis Polymers and Shaw Polymers LLC to market PE made at the site.

Shell Chemical and Shell Polymers are units of global energy firm Royal Dutch Shell. The business is based in The Hague, Netherlands, with U.S. headquarters in Houston.