American Oil and Gas Reporter - March 2019 - 105

driving this to become a reality. Plus, our
president knows the economic impact of
what this would do."
Justice reported that he had met with
parties interested in building that hub,
and he continued to talk with the U.S.
Department of Energy.
"We are going to make this happen,"
he pledged. "It is not going to be forever;
it is not going to be a pipe dream. It
really is going to happen. If we want
West Virginia to be a land of prosperity,
we have to have all the stuff: offer great
schools and great roads. The biggest thing
we have to do in West Virginia is change
our image; change how people on the
outside think of us, and see us as a
diamond in the rough rather than the
backward and ignorant 50th of the 50
states. It is getting better."
Storage And Energy
The nation needs infrastructure to rebuild its economic strengths, Senator Joe
Manchin, D-W.V., said in his remarks at
the winter meeting. "Infrastructure is a
lot more than just building roads and
bridges; it is water, sewer, broadband
high speed, and pipelines delivering the
energy where it needs to go," he assessed.
The state needs to be not only the
storage hub but the energy hub for Ohio,
Pennsylvania, Kentucky and West Virginia,
he asserted. Manchin recalled discussing
with Energy Secretary Rick Perry the
impact for U.S. energy if a category five
hurricane hit the Houston Ship Channel.
"Rick said we need a backup, and I said
we are there. West Virginia can be the
security blanket this country needs; we
just have to sell it."
It will be transformative when other
industries and businesses discover that

Senator Joe Manchin, D-W.V., tells the
Independent Oil and Gas Association of
West Virginia's winter meeting that an
ethane storage hub in the Appalachian
Basin would be a game changer for the
region's economy.

Brett Loflin (right), president of the Independent Oil and Gas Association of West
Virginia, welcomes West Virginia Governor Jim Justice to the podium at the association's
winter meeting, held Jan. 22-23 in Charleston, W.V.

available, dependable and affordable energy is easily accessible in the Appalachian
region, Manchin predicted.
"The storage hub is a game changer
for West Virginia. I think everything leads
from that," he said. "We need to move on
this as quickly as humanly possible. But
also, let me say thank you to all of you
for keeping the lights on, and for making
West Virginia look outstanding as far as
the ocean of energy you are producing
for this country."
Building The Hub
An Appalachian Basin storage and
trading hub is not merely an idea or a
way to grow one specific region, but
rather a catalyst for the nation that will
prompt further investment, economic development, high-paying jobs, manufacturing and energy dominance, argued
Steven Hedrick, president and chief executive officer of the Mid-Atlantic Technology, Research & Innovation Center
(MATRIC).
As planned, the site's storage facility
will use subsurface tanks to house chemical
feedstocks commonly used for manufacturing, such as ethane, butane and propane,
he said. It would provide both normal
supply and surge capacity, and include
pipelines between manufacturing clusters
across the region, as far west as the Ohio
River Valley.
MATRIC announced last summer the
selection of Parsons Corporation for engineering, procurement and installation
construction work on the hub, and site
selection for the subsurface storage facility
now is under way, Hedrick indicated.
Sites in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and
Ohio are undergoing geologic tests for

suitability. In addition, he said the partnership was pursuing agreements to provide manufacturers with the ethane,
propane and butane to be stored at the
site, securing supply-side agreements
from oil and gas producers, and lining
up the needed private capital from boutique
firms and multinational investment banks.
Hedrick predicted the storage and trading
hub would create $36 billion in new follow-on chemical industry development,
and create more than 100,000 high-paying,
long-term jobs. It also would add more
than $6 billion in annual payrolls in Appalachia, and increase annual tax revenues
in the Appalachian region by $2.9 billion,
as well as boosting federal and state taxes.
"In truth, the hub's reach is much
broader than Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania," Hedrick concluded. "A stable economy in America,
based on diversification of its manufacturing footprint, touches everyone from
California to Maine. This opportunity is
worthy of our hopes and aspirations."
Using The Gas
One possible hub customer laid out
its plans for using natural gas stored at
the site. J. Michael Hager, chief financial
officer of U.S. Methanol, described the
small startup company's intent to move
two methanol plants it purchased in Brazil
and Slovenia to West Virginia. "Methanol
is a base chemical, and a lot of chemical
manufacturers in the Kanawha Valley use
it for their products," he said. "Methanol
now is trucked or barged up from the
Gulf Coast, which is expensive, and requires long lead times. Once we are running, we plan on offering chemical grade
AA methanol; 99.85 percent purity."
MARCH 2019 105

American Oil and Gas Reporter - March 2019

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