The establishment of an ethane storage and distribution hub in Appalachia benefit the broader petrochemical and plastics industries, according to a Dec. 4 report from the U.S. Energy Department.

• The report, prepared at the request of Congress, examines the feasibility of developing an ethane hub, based on the abundant low-cost resource from the Marcellus and Utica shales.
• The U.S. is the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas, with an added benefit of natural gas liquids, including ethane, which serves as feedstock for petrochemical manufacturing.
• The combined natural gas production share of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia jumped to 27 percent last year, from a mere 2 percent a decade ago. The Appalachian region’s processing capacity has kept pace with the production growth, but the region currently lacks the necessary infrastructure for a hub to connect supply and demand sources, and store the liquids.
• The region is expected to see a dramatic growth in ethane production reaching 640,000 barrels per day in 2025, over 20 times the regional production in 2013. The hub would improve the geographic diversity of the petrochemical industrial sector and support U.S. economic security.