After 10 years of planning, EmKey Gas Processing LLC has opened a new $10 million gas processing plant just east of Union City, where five of Risberg's underground pipelines converge.

The plant, at the end of a long gravel lane, is actually a series of open-air installations of compressor units, 30,000-gallon storage tanks, towering vent pipes and complex equipment that cools the gas to nearly 140 degrees below zero and separates out the liquid components of butane, propane, ethane and liquid natural gas.

Inside a nearby office, operations manager Kyle Rhoades tracks the separation process, which takes only a minute or two, from a computer bank that measures track flow and temperatures, and alerts staff to any safety concerns.

Though expensive to extract, separating these components adds up to found money.

EmKey invested over $34million in purchasing the Norse gas distribution lines and is expanding

it gas distribution lines in Pennsylvania.  This new processing plant is already processing enough local natural gas to justify its investment in the processing plant and believes as future production of gas increases its ability to market that gas as well as separate the liquid components will attract future development.  Companies like Empire Energy who have a large inventory of existing wells and leases in the area will add to their production.  Upper Devonian levels have great potential and eventually the deeper Utica areas will be explored.  Erie County may be late to the party because of the Marcellus boom to the south but the building of new gas line infrastructure, new natural gas processing plant in Union City and the expansion of the Port of Erie to allow exports of natural gas to the east coast markets and overseas is well within reach.