$2M natural gas truck facility planned for Clendenin
Andrew Brown , Staff Writer
MarkWest, a natural gas company with operations in several states, is planning to build a trucking facility for natural gas liquids near Clendenin. The company filed for a building permit for the proposed project with Kanawha County late last week.
According to the permit application, the loading facility will cost $2 million, and will be constructed just east of Clendenin, near the existing Cobb compressor station. Officials with Marathon Petroleum — which took over MarkWest in a $15 billion deal last year — said the new truck-loading facility will help the company move natural gas liquids, such as ethane, propane and butane, to the Siloam fractionation plant that is just north of Ashland, Kentucky.
“Our Cobb processing facility in Kanawha County is an important asset in our existing Southern Appalachia operations, and we are excited to continue enhancing infrastructure at this site,” said Jamal Kheiry, Marathon’s communications manager. “The truck rack will facilitate the efficient collection of NGLs, which are further transported to another MarkWest facility for fractionation to purity products.”
The company would not disclose how many employees would be working at the proposed loading facility or how much truck traffic would be generated as a result of the proposed loading station. MarkWest is planning to truck the valuable gas liquids from the Clendenin area, Kheiry said, because the location is not currently connected to a natural gas liquid pipeline. The $2 million facility could bring some additional tax revenue into the county, too, and county commissioners are hoping it brings some jobs to the area, as well.
“We’re always happy when a private company wants to spend $2 million on a new facility, particularly in a place that has had some bad news this summer,” County Commissioner Dave Hardy said.
Clendenin was one of the areas hardest hit by the June 23 floods. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Disaster Recovery Center there is scheduled to close Wednesday.
