Impact Fee Provides Money For Ethane Cracker

Dur­ing yesterday’s bud­get address, Gov­er­nor Cor­bett said his admin­is­tra­tion is “hard at work to bring a major nat­ural gas pro­cess­ing plant to south­west­ern Pennsylvania.”

The nat­ural gas impact fee in front of the House would help Cor­bett woo Shell, which is decid­ing whether to build an ethane cracker in Penn­syl­va­nia, Ohio or West Virginia.

As the Beaver County Times reports, the leg­is­la­tion “would steer 5 per­cent of rev­enue from drilling fees to the state Depart­ment of Com­mu­nity and Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment for…infrastructure projects related to the nat­ural gas indus­try, such as the estab­lish­ment of a petro­chem­i­cal plant.”

Pittsburgh’s KDKA aired a report on the hunt for the ethane cracker ear­lier this week. Watch it after the jump.