Shell

Potter Township, PA, supervisors have requested more information and delayed approval of a conditional-use permit for Shell Chemical Appalachia LLC’s multi-billion-dollar ethane cracker in Beaver County.

A unit of Japanese trading house Mitsui & Co. Ltd. is buying into some potential powerhouse deepwater Gulf of Mexico assets within the Mars-Ursa Basin owned by Royal Dutch Shell plc that could capture at least 100 million boe in recoverable reserves.

Battered by a two-year rout in oil prices, Royal Dutch Shell plc and BP plc fought back, posting surprising improvements to the bottom line in the third quarter by clobbering costs and honing efficiencies in a sustained period of lower commodity prices.

Royal Dutch Shell plc, which had said earlier this year it would put its natural gas and unconventionals on the back burner, said it would sell 206,000 net acres in the Montney and Duvernay formations of Western Canada, 85% weighted to gas, to Tourmaline Oil Corp. for $1.037 billion (C$1.369 billion).

Shell Pipeline Company LPis holding a binding open season through Nov. 18 for the 107,000 b/d ethane pipeline system that will feed its planned cracker in Western Pennsylvania’s Beaver County. The Falcon Ethane Pipeline Systemwould have two legs and three source points to receive ethane from processing and fractionation facilities in Southwest Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio (see Daily GPI, Aug. 16). Shell said that if shipper demand exceeds the system’s initial offered capacity then it would be expanded to accommodate committed volumes. Shell plans to begin construction on the cracker late next year and has said operations would begin in the early 2020s (see Daily GPI, June 7). Construction of the pipeline is scheduled to begin in late 2018. More information about the open season can be found at Shell Pipeline’s website.

The plastics company that became the first to announce a significant investment in Western Pennsylvania shortly after Royal Dutch Shell plc said it would construct a multi-billion dollar ethane cracker there is soon expected to begin production.

An affiliate of Royal Dutch Shell plc has snagged long-term agreements with two midstream operators to build and operate natural gas gathering systems in West Texas across part of the supermajor’s Permian Basin Delaware acreage.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in California last Thursday continued to uphold penalties against market manipulation dating back to the western energy crisis of 2000-01.

Royal Dutch Shell plc agreed Monday to take $425 million from EnVen Energy Corp. for the Brutus platform and Glider production system in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GOM).