{"id":39853,"date":"2018-10-29T07:14:58","date_gmt":"2018-10-29T12:14:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=39853"},"modified":"2018-10-29T07:14:58","modified_gmt":"2018-10-29T12:14:58","slug":"a-field-guide-to-the-petrochemical-and-plastics-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=39853","title":{"rendered":"A Field Guide to the Petrochemical and Plastics Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 id=\"page-title\" class=\"page__title title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2018\/10\/28\/field-guide-petrochemical-plastics-industry\">A Field Guide to the Petrochemical and Plastics Industry<\/a><\/h3>\n<article class=\"node-13254 node node-blog node-promoted view-mode-full clearfix\">\n<div class=\"field field-name-field-bimage field-type-image field-label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field-items\">\n<div class=\"field-item even\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/sites\/beta.desmogblog.com\/files\/styles\/full_width_blog_image\/public\/blogimages\/petrochemical-plant-saudi-arabia_credit-Secl_creative-commons.jpg?itok=MnFP04m7\" alt=\"Petrochemical plant in Saudi Arabia\" width=\"826\" height=\"550\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"new-horizontal-social-bar clearfix\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field-items\">\n<div class=\"field-item even\">\n<p>The shale gas industry has been trying\u00a0to build demand for fossil fuels from its fracked oil and gas wells by promoting the construction of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/fracking-plastics\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a new petrochemical corridor in America&#8217;s Rust Belt<\/a> and expanding the corridor on the Gulf Coast. To help demystify terms like \u201cnatural gas liquids\u201d and \u201ccracker plants,\u201d DeSmog has begun building a guide to some of the equipment and terms used in the plastics and petrochemical\u00a0industries.<\/p>\n<p>This guide, which will expand over time, is intended to serve as an informal glossary of sorts and an introduction to what happens to fossil fuels that are transformed into chemicals, plastics, vinyl, Styrofoam and a variety of other\u00a0materials.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Petrochemical Production\u00a0and the\u00a0Climate<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/fracking-plastics\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/sites\/beta.desmogblog.com\/files\/fracking-for-plastics_0.png\" alt=\"Fracking for Plastics\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<em>This field guide is part of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/fracking-plastics\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Fracking for Plastics<\/a>, a\u00a0DeSmog investigation into the\u00a0proposed petrochemical build-out in the Rust Belt\u00a0and the major players involved, along with\u00a0the environmental, health, and\u00a0socio-economic\u00a0implications.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>These fossil fuels have a significant global warming impact of their own. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2018\/06\/21\/methane-leaks-oil-gas-60-higher-epa-estimates-science-study-edf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">methane leaks<\/a> associated with the natural gas drilling and distribution industry are so pronounced that many experts say burning natural gas for electricity is worse for the climate than burning\u00a0coal.<\/p>\n<p>While hydrocarbons that are used as raw materials for petrochemical products aren\u2019t burned (and therefore don\u2019t release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere), that leaky infrastructure still results in methane pollution.\u00a0Methane itself is a powerful greenhouse gas, capable of warming the climate about 86 times faster than an equal amount of carbon dioxide during the first decade after it\u2019s released to the\u00a0atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p>Making petrochemicals also requires a huge amount of energy \u2014 some of the largest petrochemical plants like crackers may have their own power plants on site \u2014 and that energy comes from burning fossil\u00a0fuels.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Field Guide to the Petrochemical and Plastics Industry The shale gas industry has been trying\u00a0to build demand for fossil fuels from its fracked oil and gas wells by promoting the construction of a new petrochemical corridor in America&#8217;s Rust Belt and expanding the corridor on the Gulf Coast. To help demystify terms like \u201cnatural [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[140,141,5317,328,5316,10494,1857,11167],"class_list":["post-39853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-climate","tag-climate-change","tag-desmog-blog","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-methane","tag-petrochemicals","tag-plastics","tag-sharon-kelly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39854,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39853\/revisions\/39854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}