The pollutants included benzene (a known carcinogen), 1,3-butadiene, naphthalene, and styrene.
The facility utilizes ethane, a by-product of natural gas, to make ethylene, a building block for plastic. Shell estimates that the facility has a production capacity of 1.6 million tons of polyethylene pellets per year.
Rocky Start
The operations of the petrochemical complex have been rocky from the start, something the company itself acknowledged. Read more here.
There were frequent failures and malfunctioning of equipment that led to large amounts of hazardous emission releases that have violated state law.
Eighty malfunction reports have been submitted to the DEP to date and FracTracker Alliance has compiled the data into a dashboard where you can find the name of the report and what went wrong, a link to the report and the pollutant names and amounts released.
Between January 2022 to November 2024, Shell Polymers Monaca has emitted an estimated 393.5 million pounds of air pollutants as a result of malfunctions, largely composed of greenhouse gas emissions (CO2e, approximately 383.3 million pounds).
Emission events of particular concern due to their toxicity are those that emitted benzene, 1,3-butadiene, naphthalene, and styrene.
Examples of malfunctions include equipment problems with ethane cracking furnaces, compressors, incinerators, and reactors, long lasting ground flare emissions (one of which resulted in a brush fire), and a sulfuric acid spill.
Twenty-seven of the malfunction events occurred between 8pm and 6am, meaning that light pollution from flares or excess lights from alarms are a common occurrence at the facility, which disturbs the surrounding community.
Violations
Forty-three notices of violation have been issued to Shell Petrochemical Plant to date since the construction of the complex began in 2017.
FracTracker has compiled the data from these notices on the dashboard, where you can find information describing the violation, what type of law the event violated, and a link to the notice.
Examples of clean air violations include 12-month rolling emission excesses for NOx (11 NOVs), CO (2 NOVs), and volatile organic compounds (2 NOVs), NOx emission exceedances from ethane cracking furnaces and combustion turbines (3 NOVs), long lasting visible emissions from ground flares (5 NOVs), and malodors (3 NOVs).
Violations of clean water laws have resulted in seven notices of violation.
Examples of clean water violations include discharge of chemicals into the Ohio River exceeding the limits in Shell’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit for chemicals including benzene, toluene, di-n-butyl phthalate, and total dissolved and suspended solids.
Pollution Burden
The Shell Petrochemical Plant is not the only polluting facility in Beaver County.
There are also two power plants (a nuclear power plant and a natural gas fired power plant that is associated with the Shell Plant), 6 compressor stations, 4 petrochemical manufacturing facilities, and 165 drilled fracking wells, the Falcon and Revolution Pipelines, and miles of railroads that stretch along the Ohio and Beaver Rivers.
All of these sources of emissions together result in a large pollution burden for the people that live nearby.
State/Local Subsidies
The Shell Petrochemical Plant receives local tax breaks because it is located in an opportunity zone and benefits from the largest state tax subsidy enacted in Pennsylvania’s history valued at $1.65 billion.
In 2023, Shell was approved for a $4,953,971 credit for ethane purchased in 2022.
Visit the FracTracker Shell Petrochemical Plant Air Emissions webpage for more information.
Resource Links:
NewsClip:
-- PA Capital-Star: Beaver County Group Calls On DEP For More Timely Reports On Shell Petrochemical Plant Air Pollution
[Posted: August 6, 2025] PA Environment Digest
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