West Virginia Stays Aggressive In Bid For Shell Plant

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

January 24, 2012 | 2:03 PM

West Virginia isn’t leaving anything to chance, in its effort to top Pennsylvania and Ohio for the rights to a Shell ethane cracker.
The natural gas processing plant is expected to create thousands of jobs wherever it ends up. West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin is in Texas this week, trying to woo Shell executives. He’ll be able to tell the company a 25-year tax break may be coming soon, according to the Associated Press:

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia’s House of Delegates is supporting a 25-year tax break aimed at luring a huge new chemical plant.
The proposal from Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin passed to the Senate on Monday with one opposing vote.
Tomblin wants to slash property taxes for any business that invests at least $2 billion to build a cracker. This would apply to real estate as well as machinery, equipment and inventory.
Cracker plants convert a byproduct from Marcellus shale gas drilling into a widely used chemical compound. Industry groups estimate one would bring 12,000 jobs to West Virginia.

Ohio Governor John Kasich has also traveled down to Texas to push for rights to the ethane cracker. Staying true to form, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett’s administration has remained mum on its efforts to court Shell.