He said he is optimistic Ohio regulators and Gov. John Kasich will approve the project in eastern Ohio by this summer. Construction could begin shortly after that, Hooker said at the Emerging Opportunities Ohio Valley Conference at Oglebay Resort, outside of Wheeling, W, Va.

The day-long conference drew roughly 200 attendees and was sponsored by the Thrasher Group, a West Virginia-based architecture-engineering-field services company, in cooperation with ShaleDirectories.com.

Project Seen As Key

The project in Monroe County is the first planned storage facilities for ethane and other natural gas liquids from the Marcellus and Utica shales in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, Kallanish Energy reports.

It is seen as a key project because of the under-construction Shell Chemical ethane cracker in Beaver County, Pa., and PTT Global Chemical’s proposed ethane cracker in Belmont County, Ohio, although additional liquids storage must be regionally developed, the experts said.

The Appalachian Basin is producing about 1 million barrels of NGLs per day (MMBPD), or about 33% of the NGLs produced in the U.S.

The underground capacity would be created by pumping water and dissolving salt about 6,700 feet below the surface. The brine would be moved to the surface, replaced by ethane, propane or butane. That is the best, most efficient and safest means to store such liquids, Hooker told the audience.

Permitting Moving Slowly

Ohio permitting has moved slowly because Ohio regulators were “very cautious” about the Mountaineer project, he said.

“Not a lot has changed. The permitting has been moving a little slow for us,” he said. He and his staff have had “great dialogue” with Ohio officials through numerous meetings and it appears Mountaineer “is on the path to get the permit,” he said.

Brine Ponds and Monitoring Wells

The latest plans developed with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency call for 24 inches of clay and two synthetic liners to contain two brine ponds that would be developed at Clarington on the Ohio River, he said.

The two ponds would have six feet of freeboard to assure no overflows in the process, he said. One pond was part of the initial plan, although that has been revised to two ponds, he said. Six wells would be installed to monitor freshwater aquifers around the site, he said.

A monitoring well will be installed to determine if there is any underground connectivity between Mountaineer’s underground salt cavity and a salt mine that is about two miles away, Hooker said.

Denver-based Mountaineer, a subsidiary of Energy Storage Ventures, has invested $20 million in the project, to date.

Capacity Can Be Expanded

That could be ramped up to spend $130 million to expand storage capacity to 3 million barrels or to $500 million to develop 10 million barrels of capacity, depending on demand, Hooker said.

The project is backed financially by the firm’s management team and Goldman Sachs. Tests have shown a 130-foot-thick layer of Salina salt at a depth of about 6,700 feet, Hooker said.

His company has a buyer for the brine that would be produced. The project would create 200 construction jobs and 15 to 20 full-time jobs.

The project would likely trigger an estimated $500 million in new pipelines in the Ohio River Valley, he said.

There will likely be an additional $1 billion invested in fractionation facilities to separate NGLs in the Marcellus and Utica shales in the coming years, he said.

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