Published: December 6, 2018 |

Rick Perry, Secretary of Energy.
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Ten years following an era of energy scarcity and dependency, the United States finds itself awash in natural resources and on the cusp of becoming a net energy exporter. We already are a net natural-gas exporter and No. 1 worldwide in oil and gas production. Nevertheless, we are failing to reach our nation’s full potential.

The benefits of America’s ongoing energy revolution include lowered energy costs, the creation of high-paying jobs and greatly enhanced energy security for us and our trading partners. And we’ve done all of this while protecting our environment.

How? Commonsense policies have unleashed technological advances in hydraulic fracturing and pinpoint directional drilling, enabling the private sector to identify, explore and develop new oil and gas deposits with minimal impact to our public and private lands. We’ve reduced red tape dramatically and spurred private sector-investment and innovation.

Nowhere is this truer than in Appalachia — encompassing parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky and home to the Marcellus and Utica shale formations. Were it an independent country, Appalachia would be the world’s third largest natural-gas producer.

These newly harnessed resources are revolutionizing everything, from how we generate electricity to how we heat our homes and fuel our industries and vehicles. Exporting our energy bounty also reduces our country’s trade deficit.

We can use Appalachia’s natural gas to propel progress even further. Appalachian gas contains additional valuable resources in the form of natural-gas liquids (NGLs). NGLs can be separated into familiar products like propane for heating or grilling, or less familiar commodities like ethane, which is a key feedstock for the petrochemical and plastics industries that make products we use every day.

But we are not taking full advantage of the ethane in Appalachian natural gas, which is among the cheapest in the world. And in some cases, we actually are sending that advantage up in smoke by burning off “excess” ethane through a process called “rejection.”

We should fully harness ethane and other byproducts of gas production to greatly expand value-added manufacturing in Appalachia. This would drive job creation and economic growth in an area that sorely needs it.

There now are increasingly efficient ways to deliver these valuable material to a growing global market.

Shell is building a $6 billon plant in Beaver County to “crack” ethane into useful building blocks. It will produce hundreds of jobs. This is just the beginning, for the region contains sufficient energy reserves to support additional crackers and provide thousands more petrochemical-related jobs.

Doing so would necessitate creating a “hub” for processing and storage as well as the infrastructure to transport NGLs. Fortunately, nearly one-third of U.S. activity in petrochemicals now occurs within 300 miles of Pittsburgh, so the Appalachian region is strategically located.

I’ve seen the economic benefits of creating such a hub firsthand. My home state of Texas has the premier NGLs hub in the Western Hemisphere, Mont Belvieu, and I’ve seen the tremendous opportunities it provides to the entire Gulf of Mexico region. But that region is frequently subject to hurricanes, and there are significant human and economic costs when the Texas hub has to go offline.

A hub in Appalachia would increase our national ethane supply and petrochemical production capacity in the coming years, increasing the economic vitality of the region and the resilience of the entire U.S. petrochemical complex.

The unexpected American energy boom of the past decade continues to provide remarkable benefits. Expanding the production of NGLs in Appalachia not only would increase regional prosperity, it would be another great outcome of our drive to energy dominance and independence, providing greater security and opportunity for all. Building an Appalachian energy hub is an opportunity we can’t afford to waste.

— By:  Rick Perry, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Rick Perry is secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy. Yesterday in Washington, D.C., he announced before the National Petroleum Council the release of a DOE report to Congress on the benefits of an Appalachia energy hub.