Last week Lynnda and I traveled to Florida for a short winter getaway.

The weather forecaster on TV said, “Tomorrow will be a cold night. Our low will be 47 degrees.”

That’s warmer than our high temperature in Charleston. This trip is primarily pleasure with some business mixed in. Shale Crescent USA is working with a Florida-based company, Semplastics, who has a small presence in West Virginia with potential to expand and create jobs. I talked about them last year in a column. They treat their employees as partners and encourage creativity. A year after our first visit, Semplastics still doesn’t have a problem keeping and hiring employees. Bill and Sue Easter, the owners, gave us a tour of their tech center and the projects they are working on.

To build a house or a commercial building, typically wood, concrete, metal, plastic and glass are required. To make stuff like household products, medical equipment, automobiles and thousands of other products, petrochemicals from natural gas and oil are the building blocks. The main raw material to make stuff is carbon, typically from petrochemicals or plants.

Semplastics has a unique approach to the feedstock for products. They use coal as their carbon source. Most people and companies think of coal as something to be burned for a source of energy. Bill believes coal is more valuable as a feedstock. Coal is economical, and the USA has it in abundance.

Semplastics is working on a process to use coal in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles. Today lithium batteries use graphite in the anode (negative terminal) of these batteries.

Most graphite either comes from or is controlled by China. Semplastics has found a way for coal mined in the USA to replace imported graphite. They believe coal can create a lower cost more efficient battery with better charge and discharge behavior than graphite. To support the global lithium ion battery anode supply chain, by 2035 an estimated 150 more graphite mines will be required. We won’t see the environmental damage caused by the mines. Most will be overseas and out of our site. That doesn’t make them any less damaging to the planet and costly to consumers. If Semplastics is successful they can change this.

In addition to using coal for building materials like facades and roof tiles, Semplastics is also working on a process that will take gaseous carbon dioxide and using a coal-based product they developed can turn the gaseous CO2-coal product mixture into a building product that makes concrete blocks lighter, stronger and safer.

We may transition to other energy sources but we still need raw materials to make structures, vehicles and everyday products we need. These raw materials today come from oil, natural gas, wood and other plant-based sources. Using coal as a source of raw materials allows plants to be used primarily as food for a growing world population that will add another billion people by 2050.

Natural gas and natural gas liquids are the most economical feed stocks today. Companies can locate in our region where they can be on top of their energy and feedstock and be in the middle of their customers. Governor Jim Justice of West Virginia announced at his State of the State address that TCL, a company from India, will be coming to West Virginia to manufacture in the Ohio Valley. Shale Crescent USA has been working with TCL since 2018. We were introduced to them by my friend Scott from AEP at the World Petrochemical Conference in Houston in 2018. At that conference, Shale Crescent USA presented the results of their IHSMarkit study comparing the cost to build and operate an ethane cracker in this region to one built on the Gulf

Coast. Companies have been building petrochemical plants and crackers on the Gulf Coast for over 40 years. The IHSMarkit study showed a cracker built in the Shale Crescent USA will have a 4 times greater profit than one built on the Gulf Coast. This is true for other types of facilities. The SCUSA region is more profitable primarily by eliminating transportation costs. The Shell ethane cracker at Monaca, PA is now in operation.

Scott was instrumental helping to get the SCUSA-IHSMarkit study to TCL management and introducing them to Shale Crescent USA. SCUSA has met routinely with TCL over the past 5 years. We are thrilled to have them coming to West Virginia. TCL has hired local contractors and some employees. Ultimately, they will have 50 employees in phase one. TCL will be producing products using regional energy and natural gas liquids to sell primarily to U.S. customers. TCL will have a low carbon footprint by using the latest technology and eliminating over 20,000 miles of ocean transportation by producing their products in the SCUSA instead of shipping them from India made with OPEC oil.

Before a company makes the decision to come to a specific state or site, they must first decide to come to our region. The IHSMarkit-SCUSA study information and the supporting Shale Crescent USA context of the data helps companies to decide to choose our region over the Gulf Cost or China. West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania then compete with each other for prospective companies. TCL is a win for the WVDO.

Because of the pandemic, Americans understand how many products we import. They want to see manufacturing and jobs it creates come back to the USA.

They want a secure dependable supply for products. The recent SCUSA-Jobs Ohio study shows manufacturing in the USA using American energy and selling to U.S. consumers is more profitable than making products in China and shipping them to the USA. It is better for U.S. consumers and has a lower carbon footprint since ocean transportation of energy and product is eliminated.

TCL will benefit from all of these advantages. The jobs are real. This is just the beginning.

Greg Kozera, gkozera@shalecrescentusa.com, is the director of marketing and sales for Shale Crescent USA, www.shalecrescentusa.com. He is a professional engineer with a master’s in environmental engineering and over 40 years’ experience in the energy industry. He is a professional speaker and author of four books and numerous published articles.