Making a splash
The shale gale eventually swept Lue Ann Pawlick.
“I wanted to start something,” she said. “I saw all of this activity taking place because of shale, and I wanted to be a direct part of it.”
It promised to be a smooth transition. Pawlick is executive director of the Middle Monongahela Industrial Development Association, assisting companies and growing jobs. For 21 years, she’s been taking care of business every day.
Now she’s tending to her own enterprise.
Pawlick owns Frac Water Resources, which sells water and provides water services to the oil and gas industry. It launched March 5 in the south end of Mon River Industrial Park in Allenport, where Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel once reigned.
Frac Water is a modest company for now, run out of a compact trailer on about an acre that’s a drive and a 5-iron from the banks of the Monongahela. There are 10 employees, full and part time, student and nonstudent.
Bill Waller, an experienced oil and gas guy from Roscoe, is the general manager. Molly Coneybeer, of Stockdale, is the site operator.
For now, Pawlick said, the firm is holding firm. “Things have been steady.”
Steady enough, though, to stoke ambitious aspirations. In addition to operating round-the-clock, round-the-calendar, Frac Water hopes to grow.
“Companies have the potential to frack anytime, so if they want water, we’re available 24/7, 365,” Pawlick said.
“We plan to continue to service customers from this location and continue to explore other opportunities. We’re starting to look into other product lines dealing with water. We’ve learned a lot while getting this up and running.”
Financing a start-up was an arduous lesson. “This was a big challenge at first. The cost was more than I thought it would be,” Pawlick said.
Lifting off was a time-consuming venture as well, lasting two years. She said it “took most of 2012 to get permits” from the state Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to secure fresh water from the Mon, followed by a months-long search for customers.
Pawlick said Pittsburgh-based EQT Corp. is now Frac Water’s top client, and that her firm has contracts with “two other major operators.”
Being on the site of an old steel mill has its benefits. Frac Water gets its signature product from the Mon, which sits in a wet well with a submersible pump left over from Wheeling-Pitt. Water is pumped through an 8-inch pipeline that starts 390 feet underground, and enters one of six large above ground storage tanks. This is where water trucks pick up their liquid loads.
“We triple filter the water,” Pawlick said. “Organic items can mess up fracking. This is an extremely safe takeout point.”
Waller, who lives in Roscoe, said the average water truck holds 100 to 115 barrels, a barrel equaling 42 gallons. The tanks, in seasonally appropriate orange and red, hold 500 barrels each.
“It takes about 15 minutes to fill” a truck, Waller said.
He and Coneybeer are full-time employees who head a staff that has grown to a more appropriate number. During the early days. Pawlick was in Allenport so often, she sometimes felt as if she had two full-time jobs – maybe three.
“Until we staffed up, Bill and I were working shifts here,” said Pawlick, a Carmichaels Area High School grad with bachelor’s and master’s degrees from California University of Pennsylvania.
“Now that we’re up and running, I don’t have to come here every day. I can put a full day in at MIDA and go home (in Peters Township).”
She said she and Waller “communicate on a nightly basis,” though, at that she reviews Frac Water reports at night.
At seven months, the company is in its infancy in many ways. But it is taking steps and appears to be heading full bore toward toddlerhood. Waller credits a strong parental influence.
“Lue Ann,” he said, “has all the characteristics of a good business owner.”
She certainly has the background.