Could An Ethane-Fired Power Plant In The Bakken Help Address An Imbalance? Excerpts -- RBN Energy -- January 29, 2021

 RBN Energy: could an ethane-fired power plant in the Bakken help address and imbalance?

Excerpts:

To our knowledge, there is only one utility-size power plant now operating in the U.S. that is fueled by a combination of ethane and natural gas: Competitive Power Ventures’ (CPV) 1,050-MW Fairview Energy Center in west-central Pennsylvania’s Cambria County, which came online in December 2019. The Fairview combined-cycle facility can be fired entirely by natural gas or, when it is more cost-effective, by up to a 25/75 blend of ethane and natural gas.

Back to the Bakken and the WBEC project. Bakken Midstream indicated that it has signed its first ethane-supply term sheet and is pursuing additional sources of supply; the company also has said it will build and own the midstream assets that will transport ethane to the power plant.

How much ethane will the plant consume? That will depend, of course .... 

Bakken Midstream isn’t revealing details about its Williston Basin Energy Center yet, but has suggested its capital cost will be about $400 million, which (given recent cost estimates for combined-cycle plants) hints at a capacity of about 400 MW ...... we calculate that for a blend of 25% ethane and 75% natural gas, about 1.5 Mb/d of ethane is needed for each 100 MW of power plant capacity. Double ethane’s share to 50% of the fuel blend and quadruple the plant’s capacity to 400 MW, and the ethane needs of the plant would increase to ~12 Mb/d (1.5 times 2 times 4).

If the WBEC ends up using a higher share of ethane or having a significantly larger generating capacity, the daily ethane demand could be considerably higher.

These aren’t life-changing numbers for Bakken producers — after all, a big steam cracker like the one Shell is building in the Marcellus/Utica will consume 85 Mb/d of ethane. Still, 12 or 15 or 20 Mb/d of in-region ethane demand in a play with potential ethane production (rejected plus "produced" volumes" of ~ 250K b/d represents a pretty good start.