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Shale Fuels Growth at Wellsville Intermodal Park
WELLSVILLE, Ohio – Tracy Drake, CEO of the Columbiana County Port Authority, says he and his board of directors always were confident in the potential of the intermodal park it started to develop here during the 1990s, even if its members couldn’t foresee the shale industry that today is fueling its growth now.
Ohio is the eighth largest maritime state in the United States by tonnage, according to Drake. “The reason is because two-thirds of Ohio’s borders are navigable waters,” he said.” You have the great lakes to the north and you have the Ohio River which comes all the way up here and all the way around the southern end of the state.”
Today the emerging oil and gas industry is a growing presence at the Wellsville Intermodal Park. Last week, Anchor Drilling Fluids USA Inc. celebrated the opening of its 12,000-square-foot plant there. Anchor, based in Tulsa, Okla., provides drilling fluids and complimentary energy services to the oil and gas industry, said Phil West, president. The family owned company is the largest independent drilling fluids provider, competing with the likes of Halliburton, he noted.
The drilling fluids -- specifically, the liquid mud Anchor supplies -- are used to cool the bits used in drilling and remove cuttings, West said. “It’s a mixture of natural materials, the biggest one being the mineral barite,” West said.
“We actually mix the drilling fluids here,” he added. “We also have a warehouse where we store dry materials” and when those materials are needed, they are taken to a rig location.
Exploration of the Utica shale brought Anchor to the region, and a pair of factors brought Anchor to the intermodal park, the CEO continued. One is that the park has both rail and river; the other was the presence of Cimbar Performance Minerals, which bought a plant at the site and turned it into a barite mining facility.
“We were very interested in being in a joint venture with Cimbar. We are a customer of theirs in Houston,” said Bob West, anchor’s CEO. The barite Cimbar grinds is “very important to our having a supply … so it was a good partnership,” he remarked. The plant itself will have about 15 employees “but our potential for employment is out in the field,” he said. “Once we get a drilling rig and we supply our fluids to that rig, then we will have at least two more employees per rig to take care of and service the fluids when it’s on location.”
Anchor’s opening is “just an indication” of how the oil and gas industry is changing the region, Drake observed. “Ultimately it will change the United States because if we can become energy independent and avoid having to go to those who don’t necessarily like us to acquire our energy, it’s the right thing for the country,” he said.
Maritime shipping is about one-sixth the cost of shipping by truck and half the cost of rail, Drake said. “Obviously the ability to bring your goods in by maritime is a major advantage to local industry,” he said.
When Drake first came to the port authority in 1993, the first thing the port authority did was begin to analyze sites in the county that could be developed. "It’s hard to find flat land on the Ohio River, so we started piecing together this project,” he said. “We’re about two-thirds through our construction phase. … A couple of years from now, we'll probably have the facility totally built out to offer the best options -- rail, truck, water -- for local industry.”
The intermodal park features a 60-ton deadlift crane system, “which can handle all kinds of commodities,” the first of which was components of the Area rocket system for the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, which shows the park has “flexibility,” said Don Crane, a member of the port authority’s board of directors.
The port authority recently signed a 99-year lease with Hilcorp Energy Co., which announced a joint venture with NiSource Gas Transmission to build “a major oil pipeline” throughout northeastern Ohio, he said. “I think this facility will be a staging point for the logistics and distribution of that project as well as possibly them building the pipeline back down here so they can bring the fluids out by barge to the refineries,” Drake predicted.
Situated on top of the shale play, the former rail yard where the intermodal park is located is “right in the heart of everything that’s going on” with the river, highway and railroad, said Columbiana County Commissioner John Payne. It’s significant that people from around the country as well as outside the United States recognize the future of this area. “This intermodal facility just works out perfectly – just a matter of lucky geography plus we have good leadership to take care of all of these things,” Payne said.
As presently constituted, the intermodal park is about 70-plus acres, and is “substantially full,” with just a few acres left, Drake said.
On the hilltop across Route 7 lies about 1,000 acres that could be developed, plus another 400 acres set aside for the Baard Energy natural gas to liquid fuel plant project since taken over by Planck Trading LLC. “That project is not completely dead to our knowledge. It could still come back,” Drake said.
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.