With the impending loss of 220 jobs, Bayer looks to new uses for its Institute industrial park.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The best possibility for creating jobs in the Kanawha Valley’s chemical industry involves exploiting opportunities provided by the development of the Marcellus Shale natural gas field, a Bayer CropScience executive said.

“One of the strongest, best opportunities we have in the valley and in West Virginia as a whole is to reach out and embrace the Marcellus Shale opportunity that is around us,” said Steve Hedrick, a Bayer CropScience vice president and head of the Institute Industrial Park.

Hedrick’s comment came Thursday as Kanawha County’s state legislators quizzed him about how jobs can be created to make up for the 220 jobs that will be lost at Institute over the next two years as Bayer CropScience downsizes current operations there.

“The ethane available in the ‘wet’ Marcellus Shale natural gas is so very valuable that it is extremely important we as a state, we as an industry, work together to make sure we create jobs based here based on that,” he said.

The big score would come if the valley could attract a cracker, which would process ethane from the natural gas. The ethane must be removed so the gas can be used to heat homes and businesses.

“If we embrace it, act on it now, the opportunity is huge,” Hedrick said. “There are 60 derivatives that can come off an ethane cracker.

“The Marcellus is a unique opportunity,” he said. “It is the second largest deposit of natural gas liquids anywhere outside of Qatar. That ethane is 20 to 25 percent of what is underground. The other components – propane, butane, methane – create an opportunity to have much cheaper electrical sources. Methane is separated and can be used in our power plants.

“We are not close to where we need to be to take advantage of this opportunity,” he said. “An ethane cracker will cost in the neighborhood of $1 billion. Whoever would like to build a cracker, Company X or Company Y, will want derivative plants downstream of them. It is a cascade of events. But it’s a decision we have to make. Again, it’s a ‘we.’ It won’t be the industry by itself or state government by itself or the county by itself.”

Bayer announced in December that it is pitching its Institute and New Martinsville plant sites to potential investors as ideal locations for processing ethane.

“Bayer is quite interested in this occurring,” Hedrick said. “I can say we do not have a cracker in our inventory right now. That does not imply that we do or do not want one. We do have land at Institute and New Martinsville well suited for a cracker or downstream derivatives.