POTTER TWP. – It’s built.

Construction of Shell’s ethane cracker plant in Beaver County — once among the largest building projects in the nation — is 100% complete. Operators still plan to have the site online and producing plastic pellets by year’s end.

That could be in a matter of weeks or months; Shell leadership has yet to give a definitive opening date, but local plant managers estimate operations could begin by the end of summer.

“At this point, we’re completely done with construction and we’re going to be an operating asset really soon,” said plant manager Bill Watson during a Wednesday community meeting. “Our construction contractors have turned over all of the buildings on site to Shell.”

Shell CEO Ben van Beurden on a recent earnings call said the plant will be running “more or less” at design capacity by the fourth quarter of this year. By early 2023, profits from the facility should begin to appear in Shell’s financial results, he said.

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Shell isn’t setting a firm date for production, van Beurden said, to ensure crews have the flexibility they need to perform proper safety checks.

The complex’s 600 permanent employees are already on site, but Shell will hire additional contractors as needed. At one point, more than 8,500 employees worked to build and commission the complex, which includes a 250-megawatt natural gas and steam cogeneration facility. There are about 2,500 workers left now, Watson said.

Located along the Ohio River in Potter Township, the multi-billion-dollar petrochemical complex will convert natural gas into ethylene to make two types of polyethylene used in plastics manufacturing. Once live, the plant will produce up to 1.6 million tons of polyethylene each year to make products like flexible food packaging, sports equipment, toys, crates, shampoo bottles and milk cartons.

Now that hydrocarbon, or gas, has been introduced at the site for testing, residents are more likely to see an orange glow emanating from the plant’s ground flares and, occasionally, an elevated flare used to burn excess gas. The flares act as a safety mechanism to depressurize systems, plant production manager Michael Burke said, adding that residents shouldn’t often see flaring.

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"There is a potential for light from that flare to travel upward and reflect when we do have things like fog or low clouds in the area," he said. “We do know from our experience that we will have times where, either because of a shutdown, or a planned or unplanned activity, we need to use our flare systems to keep our employees and community safe."

Shell leadership first revealed plans to build on the former Horsehead Corp. zinc property a decade ago, hoping to take advantage of the region’s abundant natural gas while cutting transportation costs to the majority of the company’s customer base in the northeastern United States. Construction began in late 2017.

Chrissy Suttles covers business, energy and environment for the Beaver County Times and the USAToday Network. Contact her at csuttles@gannett.com and follow her on Twitter @ChrissySuttles.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Shell Beaver County, PA cracker plant construction complete