$3.5M State Loan to Process Drilling Fluid at Wellsville
WELLSVILLE, Ohio -- A $3.5 million state loan will help move forward a joint effort between Cimbar Performance Materials and Anchor Drilling Fluids USA Inc. to process drilling fluid for the oil and gas industries at the Wellsville Intermodal Facility.
The two companies have already broken ground on a 10-acre site that the Georgia-based Cimbar bought from the Columbiana County Port Authority for $2.07 million in August 2011, said the port authority’s CEO, Tracy Drake.
Cimbar and Anchor – an Oklahoma company that's provided customized drilling fluid services for some 40 years -- will process drilling fluid, or "drilling mud," from materials brought in by river barge. The fluid is used to lubricate the drill during the deep drilling process, Drake said.
"It's not going to be a building necessarily," Drake said. "It's going to be tanks and things into which they'll put all the materials that then will be mixed into this mud, then will be put into tankers that go out to the wells."
Cimbar, founded in 1914, delivers raw materials for diverse industrial applications. It’s Crescent Calcium Carbonate “is used in a variety of drilling fluid and oil field applications,” according to the company’s website.
Anchor Drilling Fluids is “the largest independent drilling fluids company in the United States,” in business more than 40 years, states its website. The company serves Marcellus shale operations from its regional locations in Cranberry and Leetsdale, Pa.
The loan, from the state’s Logistics & Distribution Stimulus funds, must be approved by the state controlling board before it can be distributed. Drake said the companies have already invested more than half of the monies necessary to meet the loan requirements, and are "probably more than halfway to the man-hours required."
The project will create 20 new, full-time jobs at the site as well as 23,400 construction man-hours, according to Drake.
When it's built, the conveyor system will work in tandem with the intermodal terminal's river crane, which can handle 30-ton lifts, Drake said. With the standard barge carrying 100 tons of material, and each truck with a 30-ton capacity, it will only take three scoops to unload an entire barge. Drake said the conveyor system will improve the intermodal terminal's cargo-handling capacity, which will prove valuable to the growing shale industries.
"They're getting this mud plant in place to handle what's going on right now," Drake said. "I think they'll be done actually by the time this thing's announced and approved by the Controlling Board, which will probably be in the May, June [or] July timeframe."
The funds designated for the state loan were initially approved in 2009 for $4.5 million to acquire land needed for the Ohio River Clean Fuels project. When Planck Trading LLC of Boca Raton, Fla. stepped in to help fund land acquisition, the port authority and former Ohio Rep. Linda Bolon, D-1, were able to repurpose the loan for construction of a bulk material handling system to transload limestone from the Norfolk Southern Railway to barges on the Ohio River. Since the approved loan is lesser than the previous one, however, "We're abandoning that piece of it in order to facilitate some other pieces," Drake said.
"It's possible that limestone could come in the future, but that's not part of this project," Drake said. "I don't think we're going to have enough to finish that conveyor system, so we're going to put that on hold."
Instead, the monies will be used for equipment and site preparations to "get fully into operations to start handling things," Drake said. "Our intent is to get cargo services available early in May, if not May 1."
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.