Utica Summit 2014 explores impact of shale gas
The conference, a collaboration between the Canton Regional
Chamber of Commerce and The Repository, is focused on the ripple
effects of the area’s shale gas production.
CantonRep.com / Scott Heckel |
A group protesting Ohio fracking parades north along Market Ave from the YWCA to the Canton Civic Center
Wednesday where they continued their outcry against the hydraulic fracturing process that energy
companies use to produce oil and gas in the Buckeye State.
By Jessica Holbrook
Updated Oct. 23, 2013 @ 11:16 pm
CANTON
Experts at Wednesday’s Utica Summit 2014 covered a range of topics but agreed
on one central truth: We know this area has a lot of natural gas; now we have to
figure out how to use it.
The conference, a collaboration between the Canton Regional Chamber of
Commerce and The Repository, focused on the ripple effects of Ohio’s shale gas
boom, including its impacts on manufacturing and transportation.
EXPORT POTENTIAL
By 2020, the Marcellus and Utica shale will produce about 1.5 million barrels a day
of natural-gas liquids and about 24 billion cubic feet of natural gas. In the Utica
alone, there is an estimated 30 years of drilling capacity, said Kevin J. Little, vice
president of asset management at J.P. Morgan Chase.
Now, even with the increased production, we’re still importing liquid natural gas
because of a lack of infrastructure, Little said.
Places such as Boston, which had the highest natural-gas prices in the world in
2013, import natural gas because they are hard to reach, Little said. That gas is
sent to other parts of the U.S.
But with the big increase in production here, and ongoing pipeline projects, this
region will be able to take natural gas and export it to those hard-to-reach places,
he said. “We’re literally flipping natural gas on its head.”
The U.S. is overtaking Russia to become the largest producer of oil and gas in the
world, said Jim Umpleby, group president at Caterpillar.
It’s amazing that we’ve gone from wanting to invest millions in natural-gas liquid
importing facilities 10 years ago, to wanting to build export facilities now, he said.
IMPACT ON MANUFACTURING
The production of natural-gas byproducts, such as ethane, is expected to affect the
plastics-processing industry in the U.S.
Lower prices for raw materials in the U.S. will lead to a tsunami of change, said
Tom Gellrich, founder of Philadelphia-based consulting firm TopLine Analytics.
The coming energy boom is “bigger than just drilling for shale gas, bigger ... than
just the chemical industry,” he said.
The chemicals made from byproducts of shale gas go into myriad products, he said.
“It goes everywhere. It impacts everything.”
The plastics industry, specifically polyethylene, is already huge in the Ohio Valley.
The infrastructure already in place puts Ohio at an advantage over states such as
Texas, he said.
Lower material costs could convince companies to reshore jobs to the U.S., he said.
Companies already are making big investments in the U.S., and that is not going to
stop, said Peter Molinaro, senior adviser of North America government affairs at the
Dow Chemical Co. Ohio has one of the largest chemical industries in the country,
and chemicals are the second-largest manufacturing industry in the state, he said.
USE IN TRANSPORTATION
Compressed natural gas has an economic and environmental advantage over
traditional diesel fuel, said Roe C. East, Cummins Inc.’s general manager for onhighway natural-gas business.
Natural gas is about 40 percent cheaper at the pump and about 85 percent more
fuel-efficient than diesel, he said.
Even taking into account a lower MPG and increased maintenance costs, a vehicle
consuming 15,000 gallons of fuel a year would save about $17,600 per year.
But currently, there aren’t enough fueling stations to make natural gas a viable fuel
for long-haul, variable-route fleets, he said.
Companies are working to change that, he said.
Frito-Lay North America, a division of Pepsi Co., has adopted an “anchor partner”
strategy to put compressed natural-gas fueling stations across the U.S. The
company tells fuel providers where a CNG pump is needed and agrees to purchase
fuel from the location, said Michael Birk, senior national fleet sustainability manager
at Frito-Lay.
The stations are public because “(we) wanted to make sure we could expand the
industry and not just Frito," he said. The partnership built seven stations in 2013
and will build more next year. It’s not guaranteed — Pepsi Co. won’t award bids for
stations until next month — but there’s a “high possibility” one of the stations will
be in Canton, he said.
SARTA already has one public CNG station in the area, the first in Ohio, and
operates several CNG-powered vehicles, said Kirt Conrad, executive director and
CEO.
BACKLASH
The summit may have been full of good news, but not everyone was happy.
About 15 protesters stood outside the Canton Memorial Civic Center on Wednesday
night, holding signs and shouting slogans such as “O-H-I-O, fracking waste has got
to go.”
The protesters, from groups including the Stark-Summit Concerned Citizens
Coalition, Stark County Concerned Citizens, Food & Water Watch and Frack Free
Ohio, wanted to draw attention to the Utica’s “dirty leftovers.”
“(Ohio) has literally become a dumping ground... for toxic waste” said Alison
Auciello, the Ohio organizer for Food & Water Watch.
The protest missed the summit, which ended ahead of schedule, by about 45
minutes.
Reach Jessica at 330-580-8322 or
[email protected]