Prompted by the possibility of capturing a multibillion-dollar project that could employ thousands, West Virginia and Pennsylvania elected officials tried hard this week to persuade Shell Chemical to build an ethane cracker in their state.
"I will do everything in my power to make sure that West Virginia is positioned to take full advantage of this opportunity," Governor Earl Ray Tomblin said in his State of the State address Wednesday. "The American Chemistry Council estimates that we could create an additional 12,000 manufacturing jobs in West Virginia with the construction of an ethane cracker."
The Houston-based subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell has said it will announce soon where in the Appalachian Basin it will locate an ethane cracker to take advantage of the surge of natural gas liquids production from the Marcellus and Utica shales.
Kimberly Osborne, Tomblin's press secretary, said Thursday that the Democratic governor will propose a bill "that will effectively reduce personal property taxes for a company that built an ethane cracker in West Virginia that had a minimum of $2 billion in investment." Instead of taxing the property at 5% of its original value for 10 years as current law provides, "the legislation would extend the salvage value tax treatment of 5% for 25 years."
Meanwhile, US Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania urged Shell President Mark Quartermain in a January 12 letter to locate the cracker in Pennsylvania because the state "is at the epicenter of the rapidly growing Marcellus shale natural gas industry."
The Democrat said his state has "a proven workforce, access to water, communities with a long history of working cooperatively with industry, an extensive rail transportation network and appropriate real estate. Pennsylvania also has an exceptional higher education network which will mesh well with Shell's commitment to innovation."
Petrochemical plants "are not without risks, but I have faith that Shell's long experience will help it to design and build its facilities to run cleanly, safely and efficiently," Casey said. "I am optimistic that a Shell facility will be the foundation of an industrial and manufacturing expansion that will bring thousands of construction and production jobs to Pennsylvania."
Ohio is also is competing for the cracker, but a spokesman for Governor John Kasich has declined to say what if any incentives the state is offering to induce Shell to put the operation in the Buckeye State.
