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Kensington Plant's 'Trains' Prepare to Leave Station
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KENSINGTON, Ohio -- The second tower at the Utica East Ohio Buckeye's cryogenic processing plant here is expected to come online in about a month, and construction crews will work through the winter to get the third tower operational by spring, company officials said Tuesday.
The first of the three cryogenic towers, or cryo trains, where the chemical components are separated, began operation in late July, guests were told during a guided tour of the plant. Among those participating were Scott Nally, director of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, other state EPA officials, Columbiana County officials, and local and regional media outlets as well as a reporter and photographer from the Columbus Dispatch.
The processing plant represents another step in the process toward keeping as much of the minerals extracted from the ground in the state rather than ship them elsewhere to be used in industry, Nally said. Gov. John Kasich “wants to keep as much of this in Ohio because it’s all about jobs. You want to be able to use all of the pieces of it, not just the methane, not just the propane, but also the ethane and the plastics,” he said.
The complex can process 200 million cubic feet per day of natural gas using the cryo train now operating, said Grant Hammer, supervisor of the Kensington plant. The plant is now taking in material from 100 wells in Columbiana, Carroll and Harrison counties.
“The natural gas out of the wellhead has a lot of components in it, a lot that you use every day,” Hammer said. The majority of it is methane, used for heating and cooking in home, as well as ethane, used in the petrochemical industry for plastics. Other components include propane, used for barbecue grills and in some homes, and butanes, which are added to the gasoline mix to make cars start easier in the winter, and pentanes.
The second train is about 90% complete and expected to be commissioned in four to five weeks, said Baron John, construction coordinator at the plant. “We call them trains because it’s a sequence of processes that forms a train,” he said. The foundation is being built for the third tower planned for the site, he said.
The project has employed about 600 construction workers, with 200 to 500 on site at any one time, Baron said. “There is a core group of construction people who just follow these jobs around, and we rely a lot on them and then we supplement that with local trades,” he explained. “We need the combination of local and specialty.” The project has created opportunity for equipment operators, welders and pipe fitters, he said.
In terms of staff, the plant itself employs 40 workers, including 21 in operations, eight to 10 in maintenance and the rest office staffing and upper management, Hammer said. The plant workforce already includes workers needed for when the second train comes online.
The third train is slated for a spring start, and contractors will work through the winter to have it ready for operation, John said. Last winter he worked on Christmas Day, such is the pressure to get these plants operational. “We are on such a tight schedule here just to try to match the fields coming on,” he remarked.
A proposed fourth tower, announced last week during an event at UEO Buckeye’s plant (READ STORY), will depend on field development over the next 12 months, John said.
Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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